Flowers!

Monday is the challenge day! This week’s theme at Craft Your Passion is Flowers and as an extra challenge, you must have flowers in your image, not just in paper or embellishment. This worked out for me pretty well, as my embellishment collection is quite limited.

See, I took some in progress pics! These are the papers I was considering for this card. The digi stamp is by Delicious Doodles.

 In the end I went with the lettering paper by Crate Paper. It gave me this NY loft garden vibe so I kept the entire card simple and the colour palette limited. I so love this paper and I’m totally regretting that I bought only two sheets of it.

 The compulsory close-up! This week’s challenge prizes are from Delicious Doodles and Di’s Digi Downloads. You have till Sunday to participate so go and get crafty!

New Blog Header And Some Other Stuff

 Isn’t it cute? After hours of downloading free clipart and digi stamps, I decided to turn to a surprising source for images, my own hard drive! For the first time of the history of Thrifty Finn, I wanted to try out a photographic collage banner. And let me tell you, it was hard! The result is pretty good although I have some issues with the resolution. You can see that the image above is much sharper than the real banner. I will fix it, just not today. I’m too tired for that now.

What do you think? I tried to represent my different crafts and interests but I think it might have turned out bit girly with the pink circles and everything. The circles are a freebie from Pugly Pixel, so go check her out. The link is on my Crafty Resources- blog list.

Then something much more exciting…I have 100 WordPress- followers! I passed 25,000 views! I think now it’s the time to start thinking about a giveaway don’t you think? Just don’t hold your breath, there’s a chance I won’t get around it until, well, let’s just say I’m big on procrastination.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and find a picture for this week’s photo challenge.

Till next time!

TAST 33: Scribbled Pekinese Stitch

Pekinese stitch was very interesting to work with. I had to check out couple of tutorials but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. I had more trouble to come up with the sketch to stitch as I was overwhelmed by all the fantastic antique Chinese samplers I saw. In the end I settled on a loopy scribble, a similar one to my couching sampler.

 Can you see the mistake I made?

 The mistakes show up particularly well in this picture. As I was doing the second round of stitching, the looping, and I was turning around, I kept picking up the floss strands up, leaving them standing up quite ugly.

 Another thing I’m not too happy about, is the way I added the one lonely half-loop. I thought it would be a fun detail but it actually looks very sad and gives the sampler very half-finished look.

 But all in all, I’m excited about Pekinese stitch. It will take some finessing but I think it will lend itself to fashion embroidery quite well. Imagine military detailing…Anyhoo, next in-line is Linked Double Chain.

My other samplers are listed here. Go and have look. Clicking the pictures will take you to the individual posting where you can read more about my process with the particular stitch.

Till next time!

TAST 32: Cast-on Clovers

 This one was hard!!! I read all tutorials and watched Mary Corbet’s video about dozen times before I could wrap my head around this stitch. My verdict: Cast-on looks very good but stitching it is way too hard to be worth the effort.

 As soon as I saw Sharon’s samples I thought to make clovers and this stitch is lends itself very well for the shape.

 I didn’t have enough kelly green floss so I decided to use various shade of green. I think it looks pretty good.

One of the most visually pleasing samplers I’ve made but as I didn’t enjoy making it at all, I doubt I will be using it much in the future.

Next sampler on the list is Pekinese Stitch. If you are interested, I’ve listed all my samplers here, where you can find links to the individual posts.

Till next time!

Emboss It!

Yes, it’s time to show my latest DT card for Craft Your Passion! This week’s theme, “Emboss It”, caused a whole lot headache at the Thrifty Apartment. First of all, I don’t have Big Shot or any similar machine and thusly, not a single embossing folder. Secondly, I don’t own a single jar of embossing powder and wasn’t too keen buying one for just one challenge. What is girl to do?

My fellow DTs were very helpful and gave me a tip that I could use my rolling-pin and some textural items to create an embossed background. I got all excited until I realized that I literally don’t own anything that could be used as an embossing template. Just great. My deadline was just hours away when I thought “There must be embossed scrapbook papers, right?”

I crabbed my jacket and made a mad dash to the local craft store in order to get there before closing time. Once I got there, I began browsing through their stacks of paper and lo and behold, there they were! Two tiny, A5 sheets of wet embossed paper. Which cost me 60 cents in total! I truly am a Thrifty Genius.

 The embossed paper is the black, dotted one. I also used linen fabric that I frayed on the edges and old book pages.

 The butterfly is a digi stamp by Cardmadfairy that I coloured on Photoshop. Originally it has a scalloped wings and antenna but I cut them away. For technical reasons *wink, wink*.

 Go on and make a card and take part on Craft Your Passion! This week’s prize is 20 dollar gift card to Simon Says Stamp and 5 digi’s of choice from Cardmadfairy! Not too shabby, I think.

Well, I’m off to check out the latest TAST- stitch, till next time!