365 Cards Day 55/56

Day 55 - On Pins and Needles.
Incorporate a decorative pin/s and use a needle to stitch on your card. I used a sewing notion of some kind for my pin (I have no idea what it's meant for but it's been lurking in my sewing box for years and it's cute!) and I emboidered the flower stem for my silk daisy. I also used an embroidered ribbon to finish the card.

Day 56 - Super Sketchy Sunday

Sunday already? Yep! And for once I'm doing Sunday's card actually ON Sunday. I used some bits and pieces from my diecut box, and a recycled picture from an old art book.

365 Cards Day 26

(I had to take a few days off crafting to rest my hands... I'll try to get back to Days 24/25 when I can.)

Today's challenge is to use a 'recipe' to make your card. You have to use the following elements AND NO EXTRAS:

•  5x5 card
• 3 circles
• 2 squares
• ribbon
• sentiment of your choice

I never make square cards because they need special envelopes and take up too much room in the OWH mailing boxes, so this is a first. A friend lost her husband to brain cancer last weekend, so I decided to make her the card nobody ever wants to have to make... my challenge was to follow the recipe and to make a card as beautiful as I could in tribute to Rob.
The recipe said you had to use ribbon but it didn't say what you had to do with it, so I tried my hand at ribbon embroidery. I've never done this before but I found a tutorial on basic ribbon embroidery stitches which makes it all very simple, and it really wasn't as hard as it looks. I used the narrowest ribbon for the flowers and a wider one for the leaves because I didn't have the right colour green in the skinny one. The wider ribbon looks good but it was MUCH harder to get it through the cardstock. If you want to try this, use a tiny hole punch to make the holes in the center of the flowers (I used my cropodile) and make sure you're using sturdy cardstock because it's going to get pretty beat-up before you're finished.

365 Cards Day 3 and Day 4

Day 3's Challenge was String Art.

I don't actually own a sewing machine and I don't sew if I can help it, but I bought an embroidery template once upon a time and I have plenty of embroidery thread from my occasional flings with Cross-stitch... The template is meant to be for a fairly elaborate border, but my injured hand isn't up to much by way of sewing, so I traced out just one part of the image with my hole-poker. Then I stitched it, and finished the card in the standard way. The other interesting feature of this card is a genuine antique button - I inherited a box of antique/vintage buttons from somebody's grandmother, and this one was saved for something special.


Day 4 is a White Space sketch challenge - all the decorated parts of the card have to fall into the coloured part of the sketch, with the rest of the card plain cardstock.

This was a fairly simple challenge for me compared to the last few days - I used a fancy layered flower from my stash and added a leafy sprig to it, then I stamped a few swirls to fill out the triangle. The strip at the bottom is fancy textured cardstock topped with a recycled greeting card, and I stamped the sentiment and finished it with a tiny gold flower brad.