Monday, December 10, 2018

A Christmas Bird Card

This has been a busy but frustrating few days…cold weather; brain disorders acting up; and my sewing machine quitting. It’s in for repairs now but he is so busy when I called at 3:00 he hadn’t even looked at it yet. Groan. I have a small sewing machine but it is awkward to use after being used to using the larger one. It is the one I take to quilting bees because it is lighter to carry…which is where I was today. Twice a month a group of us get together and we make quilts for kids with cancer plus what we call ‘comfort quilts’ that go to members of our community who have been diagnosed with a life threatening disease (usually cancer) or some other serious ailment. We give these away and people are shocked that we don’t accept money for them. Some families will decide to have their own fund raiser for us afterwards though….usually a card game night…and we appreciate that. We get lots of fabric donated to us but we have to buy backing and batting so we do fundraisers for that. We also make quilts for the hospital and hospice. In fact a hospital in Hamilton, ON contacted us to ask if we could provide them with small quilts for the preemies….we have no idea how they knew us but of course, we said yes and had a special sewing day to get some made for them. It always nice to be able to give back.

I did get some more Christmas cards made….no sewing machine so back to the lower studio for a few hours! Here’s one that I really like how it turned out.

I had run a piece of velum through the Big Shot in the Swiss Dot embossing folder but never used it. I also had that little bird already coloured but never used…. and I decided to see if I could combine them. I know most people use a sketch but I’m more of a “lets try this and see if it works’ type. So the card base is a bright red as is the die cut sentiment across the top and the stitched circle. When I laid the image on the card I decided it needed something else so I die cut the holly branches for the left side…one behind the circles and one on top. That was okay but it needed something on the right side to balance it but the holly leaves were too big so I die cut some smaller ones and added them. It needed some bling so I added three red gems. Once it was all glued in place I added the flocking to the hat brim and pompom. I like how this one turned out.

That’s all for a cold Monday, December 10, 2018. Ill be back on Wednesday with another card.

Cheers

Violet