Stitched rainbow background cards.

Hi,

I've been busy making end of year teacher presents and cards, which I will share on another day, but I have also been stitching on cards while watching TV or sitting in the sunshine with the family in the evenings.

Here's the first two cards I made, with the first two backgrounds I stitched.

This was my first background with full cross stitches.

This was my second background and I used half cross stitches.

I invested in a die set that cut the little holes into the card as I have cross stitched since I was a child, but I rarely end up using what I stitched, so I thought making cards with the results would be a fun change!

This is the die set I bought, it was an unbranded set I got on AliExpress, so was inexpensive, but took a few weeks to arrive!

The larger die came with a small strip as well that I haven't used yet.

I found that the die cut pretty well, but was much better if I used a metal shim with it in my BigShot, I think the same applies to a lot of detailed dies, and it cut well when I added a thin metal shim from Cottage Cutz to my die-cutting sandwich, so I can recommend buying a metal shim if you want to use this type of die.

I simply stitched in rows to create my backgrounds having picked a rainbow of threads from my old cross stitch box. I used standard embroidery thread, the type that can be split into 6 strands, and used all of the strands together.

I used whole cross stitches on the white panel and half cross stitches on the kraft panel, but alternating the direction on each row to make a chevron pattern.

I decided to cut the white panel down after I had stitched it because I had got it a little dirty where I had been holding it! I stuck it flat onto a card blank using a thin double sided tape around the edges. I left the kraft panel A6 size and stuck it to an A6 card blank, covering the whole front of the card.

I decided to use different sentiments on these, the first from Altenew from the Painted Inspiration set which has a lot of lovely, unusual sayings in it. I stamped onto vellum with VersaMark ink and heat embossed it with white embossing powder.

Altenew Painted Inspiration stamp set

An anti-static bag is essential when stamping on vellum to make sure your embossing powder doesn't stick where you don't want it! I always forget, but you can see it makes a HUGE difference! Fortunately I was using left over scraps of vellum, so I wasn't too annoyed at wasting a small piece.

As usual, I forgot to use my anti-static bag on my first attempt, so I thought I would show you the difference!

I glued the finished sentiment directly onto my stitching by adding tiny blobs of Tonic Craft Tacky Glue onto the back of all the letters in the sentiment so that you can't see the glue through the vellum.

A fun rainbow card!

For my second card used some word dies which had a shadow layer

These say 'Wonderful' and 'Friend', but also came with 'Beautiful' and 'Awesome'

I cut the shadow layer from vellum and the word from white card.

I added a small sentiment from the Altenew Halftone Circles stamp set which fitted the rainbow theme perfectly, once again white heat embossing onto vellum.

Altenew Halftone Circles stamp set

Again I stuck everything to my stitching by hiding Tonic glue under the letters. I put some of my glue into a Woodware Ultra Fine Tip Glue Applicator bottle so I could even get it under the tiny letters on the 'You Colour My World' sentiment.

I like how the colourful stitching still shows a little through the vellum.

I loved how the two cards came out, and I will definitely be doing some more stitching on cards in the evenings!

Lesley

Supplies

Cross Stitch back ground die (unbranded from AliExpress)

Craftwork Cards A6 card panels in white and kraft

Embroidery thread and a large blunt needle (from my old stash!)

Altenew Painted Inspiration stamp set

Altenew Halftone Circles stamp set

Tsukineko VersaMark ink

Woodware Anti-static powder bag (don't forget his when heat embossing!)

White embossing powder

Mroowvibes Wonderful and Friend die with shadow layer

Tonic Craft Tacky Glue

Woodware Ultra Fine Tip Glue Applicators

A6 Card Blanks

Cottage Cutz Universal Shim metal plate (this was inexpensive on Amazon)

Sizzix Bigshot die-cutting machine