Maria Giselle's Creative Cuts: Hand Embroidered Birthday Card

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Hand Embroidered Birthday Card

Hello! Altenew has a a Sewing Challenge at their blog. I got excited about this challenge since I loved to sew before I shifted to paper crafting.

I was first planning to cross stitch an image. I stamped the images on a grid paper to create a cluster of images. I am using the Altenew Hennah Elements. I don't have a program that converts images to a cross stitch pattern so I shifted my plan to doing hand embroidery instead.

I am using some left over cross stitching cloth. I transferred the image to the cloth using a graphite paper. I stitched the images using DMC thread. I listed the colors I used and the kind of stitches I made at the end of this post.

It took me about two weeks to finish the embroidery. I took breaks in between since hand sewing strains my hand and my eyes. Also, at the beginning, I was unsure of where my design is going. But I just could not give up with the idea so I kept stitching. I did not have an embroidery hoop when I started this project. I thought I won't be needing one but having one surely made the embroidery easier.

To create this into a card, I cut a Simple Stories woodgrain patterned paper to 5 1/2" x 4 /14". I die cut an oval opening using a Hero Arts Nesting Oval die. Using the same oval die, I die cut a fun foam which I adhered to the back of the cloth to keep the cloth straightened and also pop it out of the oval window opening. I adhered this to a top folding horizontal kraft cardstock.

I created an oval frame of kraft cardstock using the same oval die and the next smaller sized oval die.

For the sentiment, I stamped the Altenew Label Love sentiment on kraft cardstock using Tim Holtz Vintage Photo Distress Oxide. To make the greeting pop, I traced the letters using Sakura Yellow Souffle pen. To mute down the color of the pen, I blended ink on the stamped label sentiment. I die cut more strips of kraft cardstock and adhered this to the back of the sentiment label. I adhered this to the bottom of the stitched image.