Hello! It’s Valerie here with you today. I have a single photo layout with hand stitching to share using MME’s Now and Then collection.
Supplies:Now and Then- Milo:“Friends” Field paper,"Friends” accent stickers, enamel dots; Now and Then- Izzy :“Good Times” Range paper,Now and Then- Dorothy :“The Best” accent stickers,“Celebrate” chipboard elements;Misc:white cardstock, embroidery floss, alpha stickers, lace trim.
For this stitching technique I mimicked shapes from the patterned paper. I first drew the shapes freehand onto some regular white copy paper and traced with a marker for a nice bold line.
The bold line makes tracing easier. I cut the patterned paper down into a smaller square and adhered it to white base cardstock. Using a lightbox and layering my hand drawn template under my cardstock, I traced the shapes onto my layout.
If you don’t have a lightbox, just simply hold your paper layers up against a window on a sunny day so you can see the lines to trace. I pierced holes along all the pencil lines and started stitching using a basic running stitch and a satin stitch. The satin stitch for the leaves was a little tricky on paper since the holes had to be spaced close, but not too close.
I took a scrap of the patterned paper with me when I shopped for embroidery thread to make sure I’d get a good match. I didn’t already have any matching thread in my stash. Shown below are my hand drawn templates.
I used Photoshop to add my journaling to the white space of the photo. I decided to add the journaling to my photo because I didn’t leave enough room for the journaling elsewhere on the page. This is something I have always wanted to try, but never have until this layout. Love it!
So how about that?! Two techniques that I don’t make use of often enough, but really make the page a lot more interesting. Thanks for stopping by today!
