Folky Eggs

Hello  my dear blogger friends. Hope you all are doing ok :) Been busying myself recently with some knitting and crocheting. Wanted something folky for the house decor so I knitted these:

Five knitted eggs with floral a motif :) I used the knitting pattern from Arne & Carlos book Easter Knits.

Originally it meant to be only 3 of the eggs -a red, orange and a yellow one. But they are highly addictive and I ended up knitting a pink and a blue one too!

I used Norwegian yarn to make them: Heilo and Falk of Dalegarn. These yarns are always a pleasure to knit with as they are 100% natural wool and they are good for smooth knitting and ironing.

I'm very pleased with how they turned out. Particularly I love their whiteness and freshness. Lots of Scandinavian artefacts features bright colours, white being most of them. 

Good weather and sunshine put me in a playful mood with a camera :)

Eventually I attached the crochet chains to the eggs and now they are decorating my seasonal tree :)

In the meantime I'm having a go at my first fair isle knitting on flat needles. It feels so different to DPNs I'm so used to. I'm knitting a cosy for one of my gadgets.

It is slowly coming on! :)

Have a good and creative week. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a trace behind. Always pleasure to hear from you. Love x 

Martha

Greeting Cards with "Ikea" flowers

While I've been working on my Dala horse greeting cards, I've decided to show you these cards. The are all about one of my floral stamps (purchased at noolibird.com) I think it's got that modern Scandi feel. I like to call it "Ikea style" as you often see such design in the Ikea store. I really enjoyed stamping and making card with this design.

On this card I used a Noolibird stamp for the flower head and for the stem and leaves I used one of the old stamps from HeroArts (the owl set) I had to do double heat embossing on each stem for the better visual effect. 

And of course I wanted to achieve some 3D effect on the flower heads so I restamped the flowers again, cut the centres out and raised them on a 3D foam pads. 

Floral symmetry - 4 flower heads, each in different colour with a punched vellum heart and a gem inside.

And stamp printing - I like how inks blend and these images overlap with each other :) I'm thinking of making a similar card but using yellows, orange and reds.

And all 3 greeting cards together :)

Very pleased with these cards. Thank you for your visits and comments. All sort of feedback is welcome. x 

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1)

Summertime is this time of year when we all appreciate surrounding us Mother nature more than usual - trips to parks, forests, meadows, walking in valleys, we all have done it... I missed some summery floral themes in my crafting so when a magazine subscription came through with this poppy cross stitch kit I wished to stitch it straight away. This is a freebie stitch kit from the World of Cross Stitching (issue: 206, 2013). The redness of the poppy is so striking and tempting that I couldn't resist making this eclectic floral card. 

There were a few shades of red to use for this poppy. It took me about 3 or 4 stitching sessions to complete it. How I managed to avoid a mistake with this frequent colour changes, I don't know but as I was backstitching all shades agreed perfectly well with the chart. Proud of myself! :) So, dear reader, if you cross stitch yourself, you will know what I mean ;)

I'm really pleased with this stitch and the mounting. The redness of the flower contrasts nicely with the pastel aqua background sprinkled with butterflies. Very eclectic, romantic and feminine at the same time :)

This little cross stitch kit belongs to a product line called The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady - inspired by a book of Edith Holden with the same title. I had a good look in my craft boxes and it turned out that over time I've collected quite a few of such kits. I just put them away hoping I'll stitch them in the future. Perhaps now it's time to bring them out :) They all remind me of old botanical books and herbaria.

I even found a set of card making papers and tags with this theme :) (My goodness! How much stuff I've got squirrelled away!)

Sounds like I'll be making some botanical stuff in the near future! 

In the meantime I'm working on a tropical bookmark from Cross Stitcher. This one is quick and easy to stitch. 

Linking to Hand-made Monday tonight! Do join in! Thank you for your visits and kind comments. xXx

3 Retro Flowers Cross Stitch Cards

Summer is just perfect for stitching floral projects. You can take your embroidery outside, sit in your garden and simply get stitiching with a cold drink next to you. This is exactly what I'm going to do when I'm on my holidays. Speaking of the florals, yesterday I finally finished off my cross stitched retro flowers, ironed them, trimmed them and mounted on the card blanks. It's a freebie from a Cross Stitcher magazine (issue: 267, July 2013). I knew from the very beginning I'd be stitching them! They are just too cute!

The floral designs are gorgeous - my style! and I just love the stripey backgrounds too!

Don't they look nice when 3 together?

Apparently you spend about 3 hrs on stitching each. Think I spent much longer but it was worth it.
Really enjoyed stitching this cross stitch kit. Great choice Cross Stitcher! Thank you! x x

Sparkly Cards (1)

Last Saturday I was going through my card making magazines and I found this freebie:

2 sheets of backing paper and 2 sheets with the coordinated embellishments to make your own cards. I especially liked the mint green ones so I started with them first. The label on the packaging says you can make at least 3 cards. Did they mean 3 out of each colour set or 3 altogether? No idea. Eventually, I ended up with 9 - 5 mint green cards and 4 pink ones :) As I tend to jazz things up a bit, I've added some of my stuff too - sparkly adhesive gems, punched laces, ribbons, peel offs and some backing papers. I like a bit of sparkle, and you?

The papers and card toppers themselves are very ornamental so I tried not to overdo the cards. I like the shiny mirror-like elements on them. The sparkly gems have been added to accentuate this shiny jewel effect.

For a change, the leafy green background and ribbons have been chosen for the garden-themed card topper.

More sparkly cards coming soon :)

Floral Cards (5)

My last batch of floral cards to reveal. These are mostly tent cards - long and narrow. I like this card format - it's a bit unusual and versatile at the same time - you can put the card vertically and get "a tall greeting card" or place it horizontally and have a long tent card. I like to experiment with the element layout on such card blanks. 

Some Martha Stewart edge punches and Spellbinders dies have been used to make these cards. I've also used some colour coordinated backing papers, punched branches, ribbons, glass painting outliner paste and little sticky gems. Now my home supply of spare greeting cards has finally been restocked :) as the card box has been remaining empty for months.

With the new craft goodies from the last weeks at home, I'm very keen to sit down and make some more cards.