In Stitches

Add a touch of homespun charm with stitching! Bringing stitching to a layout will add texture and warmth to your design, especially wide uneven stitches as illustrated here. The large flowers cut from the American Crafts Metropolitan paper line make a fabulous embellishment. Mounted on 3-D squares make it even more eye catching. Don't be afraid to cut up a fabulous paper and run with it! Cut it up, add some bling, a few stitches make it 3-D, jazz that paper up! Play around with a good old yarn needle and embroidery floss, try different stitches and see where your creativity and imagination take you!

TRICKS OF THE TRADE:

• When using embroidery floss, don't cut a piece much longer than 2 feet or it will tangle very fast.
• Before you begin stitching your paper, puncture holes where you'd like to make the stitch. This will prevent the paper from buckling and wrinkling while you stitch. It is also easier to pull the thread through the paper and prevents unwanted tears from occurring.  You may mark where you'd like to puncture the paper with a light pencil tip if you choose for a more uniform look, a ruler can guide you in this process.
• An easy way to puncture holes in paper is to use a jumbo push pin and mouse pad. Simply place your paper over the mouse pad and punch the tip of the pin through the paper where you'd like your puncture.

Happy Scrapping!

Heidi

How I saved my relationship with Ribbon.

It is a well known fact that ribbon is one of the hardest things to organize in a crafter's tool box. As much as we love ribbon, the relationship can go sour quickly once our lovely spools so attractive and enticing all lined up in a color coordinated row at Michaels starts to look like this in our craft drawer...

And this

And this 

When our best attempts to organize results in an attempt to stuff it all in a bag...

You know you and ribbon have a serious problem.

Despite your greatest efforts to salvage the relationship, sometimes it becomes necessary to seek outside help. I found my help on Youtube, and combined the counsel of two wonderful ideas from these ribbon relationship survivors. "How I store my ribbon" by cherryjewl and "Ribbon Sotrage" by Ifarrarwhite. I also created my own twist on these ideas by creating my own ribbon cards to wrap my ribbon on. I will show you step by step how I did this in my next entry. The result in combining these two brilliant ideas saved my relationship with ribbon. Our love is reignited, I can't stop staring at all the beautiful colors and dreaming of the future projects we will share. It is a beautiful thing, no crafter could rightly deny the attraction.

A rainbow of crafting dreams.

Once again noticing the little things that made us fall in love in the first place, things like, bows.

My ribbon is no longer hiding from me in a rats nest of a mess in some drawer, quietly lamenting the cards that could have been, silently suffering over the scrapbook layouts it might have adorned, feeling unappreciated and ignored because I forgot I had baby blue ribbon that would have made a perfect addition upon my best friends gift for her new little boy.

Now my ribbon looks out proudly on the world, inspiring me with brilliant ideas for my next project, stirring in me the desire to create! Even the flowers, bling and buttons have gotten involved! They are all happily organized by color and love it! They each have a pocket in which to shine, and I know just where to find them when I need them! I suddenly feel an indescribable longing to go out and buy MORE ribbon to add to our happy family! Life is good!

So my fellow scrappers! What saved your relationship with ribbon? 

Or are you guys still looking for help to save your creative inspiration together?

Come back soon for more scrapbook, and crafting ideas!

For Daddy

When Daddy goes out to sea, Scotty and I make lots of special art projects to help keep him happy, and remind him of home and how much we love him. A poster for his bed.

4X4 Squares for a special calendar with pictures of the sailors families for each day of the month.

A box full of yummy treats and letters to open halfway through the patrol. I painted this one with a submarine on it, and fish, with inside jokes and cartoons on the sides but took a sort of last minute picture of it!

And of course, a special picture just from Scotty.

We miss you daddy! We love you! Come home soon!