Greetings, Friends! I am Hannah Rubenstahl from
Fanciful Spaces and it is my pleasure to be on the Design Team for
Kraftgali. Having once owned a small business I do my best to try and support such businesses whenever possible, and being on Kraftgali's
design team is an amazing opportunity to support such a business! Princy, who owns
Kraftgali is simply amazing and I LOVE being on her team!
Princy and I were very excited to have me work on the
Cross Stitch die from
Paper Smooches. I had been wanting to incorporate a cross stitch element in some of my cards for several months now. Until recently I was unaware of a die that would help make this easy, I had intended to utilize my paper piercing tool. The magnitude of that project is one reason why I hadn't tried to do so yet. This die from Paper Smooches made this project incredibly easy!
If you had a childhood even remotely like mine, you have many memories of an Aunt or Grandma teaching you how to cross stitch. Hours of my life were spent on one project or another, however, I don't recall ever finishing any of my works. The nostalgia I felt while working on this project was palpable. Memories of the time I spent with these women filled every moment I worked on this project. I wanted to create a card that could be used for an anniversary celebration, maybe something I would give to an Aunt who taught me how to stitch, that was my goal in making this card.
To create this card I used Gina K black cardstock, for all layers. I also used both silver and gold embroidery thread, as well as black embroidery thread. Thanks to some tests on the die I knew that I needed to shim my project as I ran it through my die cutting machine. A piece of 80lb cardstock under the black cardstock did the trick. A Tool 'n One by Spellbinders might have made this project go faster, however, I was able to pop out all of the holes with my paper piercer. Next, I flipped my paper around and sanded the back with a medium grit sand paper. This smoothed the back down, allowing for my stitches to look smoother on the front side.
If you are unaccustomed to cross stitching one of the tips you need to know, in order to create a more flawless final piece, is to have all of your stitches angle the same way. For example, you can see below, all of my lower stitches go from the bottom left to the upper right, all of my top stitches go from the bottom right to the upper left.
When my pattern was complete I mounted it onto more Gina K black cardstock using
Ranger's Multi-Matte Medium. This layer was mounted onto black fun foam and then mounted onto my card base which was, again, Gina K black cardstock. To adhere the fun foam to both sides of paper I used Scor-Tape, however, the
double sided tape found in Kraftgali's
shop would also probably work!
To finish off the card I ran my gold Uni-Ball pen along the edges of the top two layers, skipping the card base layer. I feel as if this was the much-needed finish the card needed. You can see how it originally looked below.
If you are wondering where I got my pattern from, I searched "love" patterns for cross stitching, beadwork, and Perler bead projects. In the end, I found something that could be doubled in size to fit the template using a pattern I found in my Perler Bead search.
I do want to note one final step. Once the stitching was complete there wasn't enough contrast between the silver and gold. The letters were almost indistinguishable from each other. However, I saved my project by using some yellow and orange Copic markers over the gold lettering.
I have SO MANY ideas for this die set. In the future, I hope to showcase several more projects using it on my
personal blog. There are many patterns I wish to make! I can't express how flexible this die is!
If you want something that will provide a similar look, but take less time, I suggest the
other stitch die by Paper Smooches, which
Kraftgali also carries!
It was such a joy to work on this card, it brought back so many memories! I hope I have entertained and inspired you, if you make a card using this die please share!
Please excuse my chicken-scratch writing![/caption]
