Stamping and stitching

Hello again, I'm back already! I can't promise to keep this up though, as I have a really busy week or two coming up and it will leave me little time to craft unfortunately. I'm bound to be a bear with a sore head if I can't keep my hands busy, oh well!

It's my sisters birthday this week and I decided I wanted to make her a card using some blanks I brought a while ago from Stamps Away:

As you can see they have a sweet little dimensional window box on them, which just cries out to be decorated. I decided to give the house exterior a crackled effect, first by blending some 'Antique Linen' Distress ink over the entire front of the card and then stamping a crackle effect using the same ink over the top, to give an effect of cracked rendering (hopefully!). I'd recently brought a paper stitching template which I purchased with these cards in mind, as they have a garden border of grass and flowers and a cute butterfly too. 

I actually find paper piercing quite therapeutic, I don't know what that says about me :-) The stitching is, admittedly, quite fiddly to do because card isn't as easy to work with as fabric when it comes to sewing. It took me a couple of hours over all to stitch all the grass, flowers and two butterflies.

The window frame and window box part are separately constructed from the card and I decided to use some acrylic paints to create a wooden shutter and metal/verdigris window box effect. I folded some K&Co 'Mira' paper to create a Roman blind behind the window which also helped to hide the verse inside the card ;-) I finished the card off with a 'Happy Birthday' stamp and a couple of jewels. After all the time I've put in with this I hope my sister likes it! 

Sarah x