Stitching on cards

It's been a while since I last blogged here and honestly I really miss it so much. I haven't been in the best of health lately, physically challenged and quite frankly it's draining me. Music and craft have been the things that entertained me and kept me positive all the while. Of course above all is having faith in the Almighty  that all the pain is just temporary and I will see that beautiful rainbow again. Nothing is permanent, so that's how I try to keep positive always. Learn to manage the problem and all will be well.

Those who have been following me here over the years would know how I much I love sewing on paper and how I love to use them as part of the decorations on my handmade cards. Creating simple lines with colourful embroidery threads and adding beads and sequins to them too. Well, this time around I wanted to do more.

I was inspired to do more when I stumbled upon this very creative lady named Jennifer McGuire on YouTube. She is also a crafter, and she loves to hand stitch beautiful designs on her handmade cards. Of course that's not just what she does as a crafter, obviously she makes other creative designs which I also love. I just fell in love with her work! Love them all!

So off I went to try hand stitching the way she does, unfortunately it's not as easy as how she does it because she has a cross-stitch die that is to die for!! Haha! I can't seem to find anyone selling the cross stitch dies here. There are a few different types of them for different projects. Even if they do sell them, I'll bet the dies would be very expensive to buy. But those cross-stitch die makes it so much easier to hand stitch any design I want. So since I don't have them, I had to do the hand stitching the hard way, which involves me poking the paper manually with a quilling needle like there's no tomorrow. LOL! Yes, it takes forever to finish poking those tiny holes. But once they're done, I'm all hyped up to stitch!

I could do cross stitch designs or any stitch design that I want on paper. All up to my creativity. I just love the idea of how easy it is to beautify a card simply by adding a layer of paper that is stitched. I don't even have to add any flowers or other embellishments if I didn't want to. Just add a simple sentiment and the card is done. 

I'll try to make a video explaining how I hand stitch on paper soon. It's actually very easy to do especially if you have tried cross stitch before or embroidery. The only difference is how to start sewing it and how to end the stitch on paper. I used to have problems sewing on paper, but ever since I learned the technique, I find it super easy. The only thing that's difficult is poking the holes of each design. That needs a lot of focus and concentration. One mistake will ruined the whole design.

Below are some random stitching I did for my cards! ;)

I really enjoyed stitching this purple and pink combo. So happy I could finally use this design that I got from an embroidery book I bought years ago. When I first got the book, I didn't think I would be able to do this type of stitching because it looked so hard to do. But now that I've learned a lot about how to stitch on paper, this design seemed easy for me to do compared to doing the cross-stitch ones and I could complete it a lot faster as well. I love the fact that I could embellish the card with some colourful bling bling on it too. They just gives it a more special effect to the card.

This cross-stitch design with just one white colour thread used took me the longest to complete. I hope to make another one with a different colour. But white can certainly match with a lot of embellishments or if I were to add quilling flowers and leaves to it.

I love the simplicity of this design. The easiest and the fastest to complete! Haha! It started as a cross-stitch design but I ended up joining the crosses to each other and suddenly it becomes another type of stitching altogether. I just love how it turned out. Of course colours can change according to what colour of embellishments you wish to add to the card. So, planning ahead about what you want to put on the card is always a good thing before you choose the colour of thread to stitch on paper that acts as the frame. At first I wanted to place the quilling flower on the card but I decided to use the printed cut outs I bought some time ago. The colours really matched the thread!! :) It's a simple design that I could easily do and use when I'm in a hurry.

Ok! So if you were to check out Jennifer McGuire's work, you could see that my design here was inspired by her work. She just loves to stitch design like this for her cards and her designs are just beautiful! It's like stitching samplers on the card. The colours she chooses and the thread she uses are a bit different from what I choose for my designs. Because I use what I have available. I don't want to buy new materials to create something new because I have too many craft goodies in my craft room that are begging me to use them! LOL!! Like seriously, I have too many things that I bought in the past or things that were given to me that desperately needs my attention right now. I need to use them up so that I can have more space in my craft room. And this sewing project is definitely helping me achieve my mission.

Stitching colours of the rainbow!! Oh God this one took a really really long time for me to finish sewing all those colourful threads. I just can't imagine doing this one again any time soon. I would have to be in a very very good mood and have a lot of chocolates at hand before I start doing this one again, LOL!! Too many colours and too time consuming. But I really love the final effect.

So these are just some random examples of what I've been up to since July. Now in September, I'm still experimenting with what I can do with thread and paper. I will definitely do more of this in future and I'll share it here for all to see. There's just a million things one can do with thread and paper! :)

Marquise shaped Malaysian flower tutorial

Oh my goodness.....how time flies when you're so consumed with work each day. I just realised that I forgot to blog about this new thing I did last July. I made lots of quilled Malaysian flowers but, the shape of the petals were marquise (pointed oval) instead of the tear drop shape.

I really love the way it looks and they were actually done for my customers. I have been making cute thank you cards for customers who purchased my quilling kits and those flowers were used to decorate the cards with.

I have been thinking of making a video tutorial on how to make them since many have been asking me to do so but I've been occupied and distracted by other projects and have neglected on making any videos. Been a while since I made any video tutorials. I miss teaching.

Actually it's not that difficult to make this flower. All you have to do is just make the shape of the Malaysian flower and then pinch it a bit at the petal to get that shape. Similar to making shapes of leaves or marquise or some call it the eye.

Hope you will be inspired to give it a try too. See if it is to your liking as well. It is what I do most lately. :)

06/11/2016 - Here's an update.....I've finally found the time to make a video tutorial on this flower. So many of my followers requested for this tutorial, so I just had to make time to do this for them. Thank you for requesting for it too!! Have fun watching and quilling!! Do check out the video below ;).

Special pop up box thank you card for Tan Sri Zeti

It has been almost a month since I made this huge card for Tan Sri Zeti. I didn't have the time to blog about it when it was done as I had other commitments to focus on at the time. Things had been so hectic the past month, I haven't much time to rest and unwind. It's always work work work everyday. I wish I have more time to blog as there are a few more cards that I have made this month but have yet to upload them here due to the time constraint.

I have to say that this project was the most complicated I had ever done not because of the complexity of the design but because I was not given enough time to get it done. It was quite a rush indeed and it was a miracle that I got it done and posted before the due date. The card design is very simple as Tan Sri Zeti is a very simple person, and she does not like a design that is over the top and full of fancy decorations. So I was not able to decorate it much like I always do for all my other handmade cards. I had to keep it simple for her. That was their special request from me. Keep it simple.

I'm not a graphic artist by profession, I'm just a small time crafter and it kinda took a lot from me to complete the job. I kept wondering why I was chosen for this project, and maybe someone else could probably do it better but then I found out that it was because they wanted someone who could make the pop up box card as they really were fond of it and would suit their request. They didn't want any other type of card for this project and was really excited about those pop ups that I could do for the card. Since I have been making a lot of those pop up box cards in the past, so they figured I was suitable for the job. Although I have never done any pop up box card as big as this one, I just had to give it a go! I never thought it was possible for me to do it and it was quite a challenge but I did it on my own! Alhamdulillah, I believed that Allah helped me along the way.

I am proud of myself that I got it done they way they wanted it. I did it to the best of my ability, but perhaps if there was more time given, the design would have been different, I'm sure. When it comes to handmade craft, it is important that I have enough time to get the thing done.. It's a slow process and needs a steady hand. Can't rush it. But not everyone understands that. Some might think that it's something easy to do. Well, it's not as easy as it looks.

I also had to do some drawings and hand cutting some logos as they were not available for me to print them. So I had to draw them from scratch and cut them by hand. This was a bit challenging but because I'm used to cutting designs by hand before, so I managed to do them.

If you can't imagine how big the card is, you can view it from the photo below or the video that I have embedded below. The height of the card is about as tall as an A4 paper and the width is about the same too. It's huge and not that easy to handle. After making this huge card, I realised how small my pop up box cards were before. They seemed so small now......you can see the difference below...hehe!

One thing good that came out of this project is that now I am more confident of making bigger pop up box cards and believing that it is possible. Before this I never knew I could do it. I would have never done it on my own, thinking that it was too much for me to handle. Now I realised that I could if I set my mind to it. Of course there will be challenges along the way, but if I didn't try, I wouldn't have known my capabilities. I'm glad I did it.....no matter what. And I did it when I was sick too...that's why I said that Allah helped me along the way.....as I would never have been able to complete it without His help..... :).

At the end of the day, what's important is that Tan Sri Zeti loved the card so much as she has never seen anything like it before. She even asked them who made it.  I was happy to get the good news and that really really made my day and made it all worth the while. :)

Sending you a note of thanks

TY007

Sometime ago this year I made some soft clay heart shapes so that I can use them as decorations for my handmade cards and hand-bound books. At one point I kept making lots of them but I never used them until I got this idea for this thank you card.

I've ran out of thank you cards and desperately need some in stock too. I need it to give to a good friend of mine and she loves shades of brown and gold. I'm convinced that she will appreciate this card very much just because of the colours. But of course I also hope she loves the design although simple it may be. However, although it looks simple, it's pretty much time consuming to make especially the pop up part inside the card.

The gold frames I used for the cards are not store bought ones. I made them myself. It was fun making them. Now I've got an idea of how to make my own cute little frames for decorations on cards and hand-bound books. That will save me a lot of money plus making my artwork quite different from the rest. I wrapped around the frames with a gold thread. It's not real gold of course! Haha! But it sure looks expensive though! :D

For the first time too I used this rubber stamp that I got as a gift last year. I never thought I would like it this much. I didn't think much of it when I got it, but now I'm seeing it in a different new light. I love how the soft yellow chalk colour the ink pad made on the dark brown paper. It really stands out. :)

I just realised how many heart shape craft punches I have! I'm such a sucker when it comes to heart shapes. I guess I can never resist buying craft punches with that pattern. Besides it's one of the most used craft punches I've bought thus far. It's the most productive ones in my craft room. Worth the buy!! :D

I'm so glad I finally made all the thank you cards. I might make them in different colours if I have some spare time. But for now I'm happy with what I have! :) Do check out the video of the card that I made. You'll be able to see how the hearts pop up inside it! :)

Cutting words out of die-cut alphabets

TY006

It all started a few days ago when I was playing and experimenting with the die-cut alphabets that made me thought of using them to cut out wordings on card stocks. In the beginning I was not too keen on doing it because it would be mean that I would have to separate the die-cut alphabets into individual pieces. I hated doing that because I loved looking at them all joined together. I'm weird no? haha!

But for the love of experiments, I did what I had to do...huhuhu! But I'm glad now that I did that because otherwise I wouldn't be able to try out this technique. Check out the photo above where I did the wordings "thank you" using the die-cut alphabets. I love the fact that I can arrange them any way I like on the card. At first I arranged them in a straight line before cutting them with the die-cut machine.......but after a while I got bored and arranged them randomly like the one I did for the swing card below.

For the wordings on the note size card you see above, I used a scrap pattern paper to layer behind the cut out alphabets, but for the swing card below, I used a shiny transparent fabric and white paper to layer behind the cut out alphabets. So cutting out the alphabets on card stocks are fun because it reminds me of what I did before with my bookmarks. You can view a sample of what I did with my bookmarks at the links HERE and HERE. It's similar in concept but different in technique because the one I did for my bookmarks were cut out by hand using a craft knife. That was a lot harder to do compared to using die-cut alphabets.

TY007

I think by far, this is the simplest swing card design I've ever made. The only thing that is difficult to do for me is the blending of the distress ink on each corner of the card because I'm still learning how to control the blending tool. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it doesn't but I can't blame it on the blending tool, I must blame myself because I'm not getting enough practice. Must practice more. ;)