Top

Lisa Stein

paper crafter, crochet addict, book reader, golden retriever lover, vegan

Challenge Me a Christmas Card: Cross Stitch

Happy Monday to you. If you’re reading this in Australia, Happy Monday. 🙂

I’m so happy to be sharing this card with you today. My dear friend Michelle Lupton invited me to play along with her “Challenge Me a Christmas Card” series this year, and assigned me “cross stitch”. I feel like I should warn you. I don’t cross stitch. I have only embroidered twice. So, my take on this cross stitch theme is me making an X with embroidery floss. That works, right? And I believe this card should be categorized as part of the impressionist genre of art. Ha!

I used the Paper Smooches Cross Stitch die on a piece of silvery grey felt. I then used embroidery floss and a needle to stitch some ornament shapes onto the felt. After I’d completed a few ornaments, I used the same color floss to create some small spots of color along the background, and then filled in the blank space with some warm grey floss. Did this take hours, why, yes it did. What makes you ask? The good news is that I got caught up on some craft videos while I was stitching away.

To create the silver frame I used two Stitched Rectangle dies from Lawn Fawn. I laid them out on my craft mat so that they were properly aligned and taped them together, on the back side. Then I ran that through my die cut machine with this awesome metallic kraft card stock from Tim Holtz. I thought the frame was the perfect way to feature this stitched “embellishment” on my card front. To get that piece of felt onto the card front, I backed it with some scrap paper, for stability, then adhered to the card front directly. The frame has foam adhesive around the outside edge to get it to the proper height over the stitched piece.

For the sentiment I die cut the awesome Concord & 9th Merry die four times. Once from red cardstock and three times from white. I stacked those on top of each other for more dimension. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of stacking sentiment die cuts together. I searched through my stash and found the most wonderful Christmas stamp on this Simon Says Stamp Stained Glass Greetings stamp set. I love the font. I used some Ranger Matte Medium to get that die to stick to the framed silver cardstock, and then some foam adhesive and matte medium on the sentiment strip.

Make sure to go see what Michelle has made. She assured me she also has no cross stitch experience, so that means it’s probably perfect. 🙂

Supplies:

Stained Glass Greetings
Stained Glass GreetingsSSS		 Large Stitched Rectangles
Large Stitched RectanglesEH | SSS		 Merry
MerryC9		 Cross Stitch Die
Cross Stitch DieEH | SSS
VersaMark Pad
VersaMark PadEH | SSS		 Hero Arts White
Hero Arts WhiteEH | SSS | HA		 Tim Holtz Metallic Kraft Paper
Tim Holtz Metallic Kraft PaperSSS | AZ		 Black Card Stock
Black Card StockSSS
Bamboo Felt
Bamboo FeltET		 Be Creative Tape, 1/2
Be Creative Tape, 1/2″EH | SSS		 Multi Medium
Multi MediumEH | SSS		 Foam Tape
Foam TapeEH | SSS | AZ
Embossing Gun
Embossing GunEH | SSS		 Scissors
ScissorsSSS | AZ		 Stamp Shammy
Stamp ShammyEH | SSS		 Mini MISTI
Mini MISTIEH | SSS
Powder Tool
Powder ToolEH | SSS		 Craft Sheet
Craft SheetEH | SSS		 Tweezers
TweezersEH | SSS		 Paper Trimmer
Paper TrimmerEH | SSS

Rainbow Thanks

It’s challenge time over at A Blog Named Hero, and we are using a few pictures for inspiration:

rainbow

Lots of rainbow fun, right? Rainbows are bright, and colorful, and happy. And I like creating things using the colors of the rainbow, somehow, it always just “works”, naturally.

IMG_5246

The only thing I think I need to mention about this card is that I used a piece of graph paper to punch holes in the watercolor paper before I colored it like a rainbow. After the watercolor pain was dry I used the May Arts iridescent string to make embroidered French knots in each hole.

This was my second iteration of this card. Here’s the first one:

IMG_5238

Why, yes, that is a giant blob of Glossy Accents on the card front. Why do you ask? 🙂

Make sure to join us in this challenge, as always, our wonderfully generous sponsor, Simon Says Stamp is offering a $25 gift certificate to their store. Where you might want to get some more Glossy Accents, and one of those needle tip bottles. Or, is that just me?

SSS_2014_sitelogo

25dollarvoucher

supplies