I am stitching on cards this month, but it is a long process so these upcycled Christmas cards were stitched on the sewing machine.
A simple star frameA pattern stitch sandwiched between two wandering straight stitch framesMy favourite: the machine’s version of cross stitch lifts this cardStitching with gold thread is subtleMounting the stitched card to set it offSimple so I added lots of stickles for dimensionA zig zag stitchDelicate straight stitch on this one
Each card has a tailor made envelope using the plain side of 12x 12” patterned paper. The stash for Christmas 2023 is underway!
Have empathy with our Australian friends and try to imagine a hot, summer Christmas by upcycling old Christmas cards on a hot day in June!
No, not getting the Christmas sparkle at all but I have tackled an overdue ‘to-do’ with 30+ cards remade. Simple cropping, matting and embellishing makes this a satisfying to reduce the stockpile of card and sparkly things. I even used up some googly eyes and red glitter glue!
I used my scan n cut to make a few cards that weren’t too quick but neither too fussy.
Pleased with the drop shadow on the ‘happy’, pleased I used scraps and bulk cut the letters, and love the embossing . Maybe I went overboard with the mica misting but everything is sparkly.
I have been wire wrapping sea glass found on a nearby beach and wanted to present them nicely, so turned to the scan n cut.
I drew an outline of where we live and scanned it in to the machine’s memory. I then resized it to hold some of my decorations and cut out just enough from sturdy white card. Before writing my message, I inked up the coastline in blue and faintly inked the land in green.
I can, in the future do tiny versions or go up to 12” wide versions for any home made crafts. It has taken me three years of playing with this machine to do what I should have thought of on day one!
A flowery kit this month, outside my comfort zoneMade loads of cards, used most of the kit papers and toppersTried to keep cards clean and simple – ishEven made a sunburst card with my scraps, good girl!And the last of the card became presentation bags using previous kit dies
From the Crafter’s Companion ‘Cute as a Button’ kit
I cut tag shapes (with the scan n cut) from scraps of card and tried to use up embellishments as part of a ‘Use What You Have’ drive. This was so successful that I have batched and bagged sets to give away.
Die cut flowers, butterflies, ribbon and twine all used, hurrah. Not quite used up yet though.
Into each batch went some not so girly tags as well, not that many though.How is that for forward planning? I even have some Christmas tags ready.