Hello Lovely with Rebecca Luminarias

It's the last Friday of the months which means, sadly, it's our last week with this month's guest designer Rebecca Luminarias. Today's card is clean and simple, but packs a punch. Take a look:

Hi everyone! It's Rebecca Luminarias back one last time with a different approach to a one-layer card. Inspired by the Hand Stitched stamp set, I decided I'd make stitching a main element of my card design. All I needed was the perfect stamp. This cute flower center, or sun burst, from Scandinavian Prints was more than I could have hoped for!

I chose my floss, which is an ochre-hued yellow (DMC 3820). First, I stamped several of the images in a similar ink all over my card. You don't have to match the color exactly since you'll be stitching over it, but try and get as close as you can, just in case parts of the image show through.

With a paper piercing tool (or a needle if you don't have one of those), I carefully poked holes in the center and at the end of each outer point of the bursts. After that, I stamped my sentiment, which was "hello lovely" from Hand Stitched. Since I was stitching, I thought the dashed letters were a fun choice!

After all my holes were made, it was time to get stitching! Embroidery floss is 6-ply, but I pulled it apart and used only 2-ply for this design. The thickness of the lines in the stamps determined that; if they were thicker, I'd have gone with more strands; thinner and I would have only used one, or plain sewing thread. Use your best judgement.

I straight-stitched each line in the image, coming up through the center, and going down through each end point until I was done. Then I moved onto the next one, and soon, I had a whole lovely card full of sun-bursts! And this card is just one layer, but still has texture, thanks to the stitching.

One of my favorite things about using embroidery floss is how saturated the colors are, so the yellow against the plain white cardstock background really stands out.

You can try this technique with all kinds of stamps. I'm still somewhat new to embroidery so I haven't mastered many of the different stitches yet--or small curves in the designs! But I definitely love the way this card turned out so it's one I'll try again and again in different thread colors.

Is this something you've done before? Is it something you might try in the future? Or are you a master-embroiderer? I'm hooked! Thank you so much for having me this month, Neat & Tangled--it has been so much fun!

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Introducing our May Guest Designer, Rebecca Luminarias

It's always a treat to be introduce each month's guest designer and this month is no exception.  Please welcome Rebecca Luminarias to the blog!  Rebecca is such a talented crafter who can do it all - scrapbooking, cardmaking, planners, but her real passion is packaging and she is SO GOOD at it!  Get ready to be wowed, but first here's a little more about Rebecca:

I live in Southern California with my husband (Arvin) and 2 small children (Augustus & Anemone). My crafting obsession is gift wrap & tags; I love to create my own, but I also enjoy seeing how others turn a plain box into a work of art. I'm an introvert who craves quiet alone time, but I also enjoy being around close friends. I have a vivid and very active imagination, which is a gift and a curse, inspiring both passionate creativity and relentless worry. For the last 10 years, I’ve been pushing that imagination to focus more on the creative side, and it just might be working! Currently, you can find me on the Pinkfresh Studio and Make a Pretty Life Design Teams. In addition, I’m the Packaging Ambassador and a Product Designer for Papertrey Ink.

For my first project, I kept the technique fairly simple, just repetitive stamping. One of my favorite project types is gift wrapping and when I can, I make my own wrapping paper with stamps and ink. It's fairly easy but the result can look like you went out and bought expensive gift wrap (when really, it's just ordinary printer paper!).

That's what I've done here, choosing stamps from Neat & Tangled sets that make great modern patterns. I'm using mainly Scandinavian Prints, but I also borrowed the 'x' stitches from Hand Stitched. Practice on scrap paper first, to get a color scheme and design you're happy with. I chose off-set circle blooms and the dotty flower centers stamped in a repetitive form in pink, coral, and chartreuse. Once I had the pattern and colors I liked, I covered an entire 8.5" x 11" sheet of bright white copy paper with it.

After I wrapped a box in my pretty paper, I also created a matching card and tag. The 4" x 4" folded card features the same design with the added sentiment "find joy in the ordinary" matted onto gold glitter tape and a strip of lace for a hint of texture.

On the tag, I stamped "hello friend" near the bottom and then stamped the flower centers all over the rest of the card. I chose not to add the pink circles because the tag was poised to sit right on top of the stamped gift wrap and I wanted it to stand apart from it. I made a pale pink embroidery floss bow and then slipped the tag under gold fuzzy ribbon to keep it in place.

My second pattern has more lines and bolder colors than the first and could easily be turned into a masculine wrap by changing out the coral shade. I love that circle with the lines around it, also from Scandinavian Prints, and I accented it with burnt orange x's from Hand Stitched. The coral flowers in between add an unexpected pop of color and a solid shape to the mix.

While I did mostly stick to laying out the design evenly, it's not perfectly aligned and I'm okay with that. I didn't set out to create a perfectly spaced pattern--I just wanted to create something fun!

I made a matching card and tag for this package, as well, and again made a slight change by opting to stamp "just for you" in coral instead of stamping the semi-circle flowers. The thick brushed lettering still offers a solid contrast to the thin lines in the rest of the pattern but allows me to get a sentiment in there, too. I stamped "just for you" first, from the Sweet Treat Sentiments set, and then filled the shapes in around it.

The tag is the exact same concept as the card, just smaller. I did add a glitter hole reinforcement and some navy seam binding, which I used to tie the tag onto the package.

I hope you'll try some patterned gift wrap if it's not something you've done before! You can use printer, kraft or solid colored wrapping paper if you have a large gift to wrap. I adore the Scandinavian Prints stamps in their flower forms, but they also make really cool modern patterns, too!

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Beary Cute Lunchbox Notecards

It's been a while since I made lunchbox notecards for my son and I thought the bear from Beary Merry would be perfect for little notecards and even holiday tags. He's a fair-sized stamp image and makes a great notecard and sweet surprise!

Just like the card set I shared right after the October Release, all of the bears and their "stuffies" were heat embossed and watercoloured, which made this set quick and easy to mass-produce.

I used a kraft backing since the bears were brown but you could use any colour. For more festive holiday tags, I might even use green or red cardstock for the back of the notecards.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Sources:

InLinkz.com

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