Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Celebrating One of My Favorite Things with Practical Scrappers


I will let you in on a little secret.  Today is my birthday.  Yippee!!!  And what better way to celebrate than by showing you one of my very favorite things to do on a layout.  What is it?  Can you guess?  It's machine stitching!  And PRACTICAL SCRAPPERS chose today, of all days, to do a post on machine-stitched layouts.  Coincidence?  I think not!  So, of course, I contributed with this layout, on which I machine stitched just about anything that could possibly move.  And the little pieces (like the diamond-shaped pieces of paper) that I was too lazy were too little to be easily stitched - I just doodled around those edges so they would look stitched, too.

To get started, I used a wonderful sketch by the very talented Amaryllis found over at SCRAP THAT, a kit club where my bestie, ALISSA, is a design team member.  Papers are from Pink Paislee's Prairie Hill Collection, and my shaped papers were cut out using my Silhouette.  The picture you see?  It is one of my second daughter's engagement photos that I am totally in love with!  Let me warn you, there are about 50 more pictures from her engagement shoot that I am also "totally in love with" so you will be seeing quite a few more!  So gird your loins! (ha! - I love using that phrase)

I love the pops of color this cluster of flower adds.  They are by Basic Grey, but I thought they worked quite well with this layout.


Machine sewing across chipboard alphas is a great look, I think.  Don't be afraid, your sewing machine should be able to handle it quite easily as long as you go slowly.


I love adding a zig zag stitch as a way of defining my border near the edges of my layout.  Smaller pieces of paper use a simple straight stitch - sometimes once around and sometimes twice around the paper - almost always deliberately NOT straight, because I like the "messy" look it provides.  You can see that my small diamond shapes have doodling in brown marker that matches the thread I used in my machine stitching.  Even my photo has a zig zag stitch going across it as an accent (and to hold my twine in place).

Layers + stitching = LOVE!!!


That's all for today.  Now, I am off to have breakfast with my oldest "babies" but, before I go, I wanted to leave my birthday wish for YOU.  Celebrate life.  Celebrate it every day.  Document it.  LIVE it.  Enjoy the beauty and the wonder and the excitement (and even the uncertainty) that is each new day.  I love you all and look forward to spending my next year with you!

Hugs and Kisses!

8 comments:

  1. First off, Happy Birthday!!!
    And secondly, gorgeous layout!
    I love machine stitching on layouts and it's one thing I don't have access to right now.
    Your stitching is fabulous!

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  2. Beautiful! I love stitching on my pages too. This looks great with all of the sewing (faux and all). :)

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  3. This is lovely. Beautiful stitch work. Wishing you a most very happy birthday.

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  4. Happy birthday Krissy! another lovely layout, your daughter looks so happy!
    Have fun making the album - maybe it could hold engagement photos?!

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  5. Gorgeous gorgeous page!! You have been on a fantastic roll with projects lately!! And hope you had a WONDERFUL birthday!

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  6. hiya Krissy , I am Maggie your newest follower I came by from Crafting Ireland x love your engagement l.o. lovin all the stitching and beautiful colour x I ahve just recently finished an engagement L.o too and am pretty happy with how it turned out I will blog about it in the next few days x looking forward to having a good root through your blog x
    happY CRAFTING
    xmaggiex

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  7. Happy Birthday Krissy!!!! Beautiful work! Great to be on the CI team with you!
    Robin

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