Erica's Stitches

It's time for Christmas crafts.  This year I've been painting watercolor candy canes as card inserts. I've also been stamping snowflakes on envelopes and cardstock. 

I love pretty papers and have a hard time throwing them away. My favorite papers include calendars and Christmas cards. Instead of saving whole Christmas cards I've taken to cutting out interesting circles and saving them instead. I've turned a whole box of them into garlands and gift labels. There are so many styles that I can always find one to suit the recipient. A new batch of cards has started arriving in the mail!  More pretty papers for my collection!  I wonder what I'll turn them into next year. 

Here are this years Christmas Cards. They are similar in technique to the cards I made last year but I was a little more random this year. I used mostly a watercolor scribble drawing cut up into pieces.  There are also bits of other colored papers. This year they are all different.  Some are trees and others are random patterns.  They all have random scribbling.

My friend Pat just went through a few months worth of this blog and asked me "How do you make those snowflakes?" For me, they are easy, so I thought that I'd demonstrate.  Since, spring is coming, I thought I'd use brightly colored origami paper and try to make the snowflakes look more like flowers. First, you start with a square of paper and fold it in half and then in half again.  Pay attention to where the center of the paper is and then fold diagonally going through the center corner. At this point I pick up the paper being sure to hold it at the center.  If you start at the wrong corner you won't end up with a snowflake - just pieces of paper. The two sides radiating from this corner will become the spines of the snowflake.  You need to cut a random pattern into the third side (a very fancy V) making sure you don't cut the two sides coming from the center. Now, you may cut off a piece of the center and pieces along the two sides.  These will...

Biscornu's have been popular for a few years now.  I've always admired them but haven't tried making one until recently.  Last weekend, my Embroiderers' Guild of America chapter had a program on biscornu finishing.  Several beautiful designs where provided but I wanted to do my own thing. A biscornu, a many sided object, is made with one or two stitched squares so any square design will work.  Since the design comes together at the corners and the center is indented I sensed interesting possibilities.  I wanted my design to take advantage of these features. In December I made tons of paper snowflakes and decided a paper snowflake would be a great inspiration.  So, I designed a cross-stitch snowflake just as I would cut one out of paper.  I only worked with one quadrant adding cutouts and other shapes and then "unfolded" it to get the finished snowflake. For fun I stitched it in two colorways, light green on purple and dark teal on gra...

The Art Journal class at the local quilt store did not continue into the year.  It was great to get away for an hour or two and work on a fun project with all the supplies provided.  So, a friend and I from class have decided to do our own thing.  Thursday after work I showed up at her house for a relaxing few hours.  In honor of Valentines Day we made paper cards for our families. We started with randomly watercolored paper and cut and punched shapes and glued them down somewhat randomly. The challenge will be to come up with ideas to keep us going the whole year long.  The projects need to be simple and something we can complete (or mostly complete) in a few hours.  We definitely want to make quilted people pins again.  And I have a few projects I've been meaning to do which we will probably attempt.  I'll keep you posted on what we do.

One of my favorite things to do is visit the new books shelf in the library.  Besides fiction, I look at cook books and craft books among others.  I find many great ideas in these books.  Last week I spotted Origami Card Craft: Clever Cards and Envelopes to Fold by Karen Elaine Thomas.  The project that caught my eye was a Jacob's Ladder.  The picture above is my first try.  I messed up the folding so you will see some creases where there shouldn't be.  Next time I'll do better (and I'll find brighter paper).  I've made Jacob's Ladders before and I was doubtful how the paper version would work.  Except for having to divide the paper in thirds, it was easy, and the result is very sturdy. For those who haven't seen these before, it is a book that is hinged on both sides and can open either way due to the clever arrangement of the ties (in this case the white paper).  If you put a sheet of paper on the left half, close it and the...

Winter has definely arrived.  Temperatures at night have been well below zero and the snow is crunchy. It's fun to make snowflakes that don't make the roads slippery or mess up traffic.  It also doesn't hurt that this can be done inside where it's nice and warm. I've made snowflakes like this since I was a kid.  I'd tape them to the windows so it always looked snowy outside and they would stay there all winter. A few random snips and you end up with a unique snowflake.  Never knowing how they will turn out until they are unfolded is part of the fun. Usually I start with a square folded in half and in half again and then in half diagonally to make an eight pointed star.  This time I got a quilt ruler and tried folding the paper into sixths to get a six pointed star.  It's not as easy as eigths but it can be done if you are patient (I'm sure there's a good trick that I haven't figured out yet). Let it snow!

I'm making Christmas Tree cards. I was framing a watercolor painting and had to trim it down to fit the frame.  I know, I shouldn't do that.  Over 10 years ago I had a frame job quoted and the price caused me to put the watercolors in a drawer and forget about them.  I found them a few weeks ago and decided to make them fit in a standard frame. I ended up with thin strips of paper with bits of watercolor on them.  They where so pretty I made a few sheets of watercolor doodles just to cut them up. They look even prettier cut up into smaller pieces and turned into trees.  Before I could stop myself I had fashioned 20 cards.  I just can't let anything pretty go to waste. Now I have some "new" watercolors on the wall where they can be seen and some non-store-bought Christmas cards as a bonus.