Red and Gold Embroidered Anniversary

Hi all.  It has just occurred to me looking at the date that I have just passed the two year mark on my blog.  I can't believe it as it seems like no time at all since I started and I would just like to say how many wonderfully creative people I have met through their blogs and how much I love being part of this crafting community.

I have another anniversary card for you today.  The summer months are the busiest so not many more before the end of the year, just three I think, then none until April although I may find one or two to blog that haven't been aired.  Anyway, this is it.

I was prompted by Mrs A and her  Butterfly Challenge which has the theme of a butterfly of course but the letter Y for yarn, though it seems this can be interpreted more loosely as a thread of some sort so I have chosen embroidery thread, specifically a gold sparkly thread as you can see I have used it on the background and on the two red hearts.

I started with the background which was embossed with the Kimmy-Luvs folder from Cuttlebug which sadly is not available any more but does come out quite often for an anniversary card.  I used a piece of a blank card which I managed to ruin with atrociously bad stamping but was ideal for this.  I decided where I would place my embroidery threads and I just pushed them through the card with the needle itself.  There are four elongated 'v's' but they give the appearance of the thread being pulled together behind each of the hearts. To make the threads stand out I used the full thickness, all six threads and stuck on the reverse of the card with double sided tape. 

I cut the hearts using my Nellie Snellen heart dies using snippets of red card, and then I had originally thought I would leave the hearts as is but decided to go for the embroidery in a bigger way so took my needle and thread and just went for it.  I put the holes in mainly as I went along and pierced with the needle, but with hindsight should have used a pokey tool and made them a bit more regularly spaced.  I decided to make a pattern up and so looking at the heart I thought that top to bottom one way would look quite nice and then the same in the other direction but weaved in and out.  On one heart the threads go nearer to the edge than the other but it took me quite a time to do it so was not too keen on redoing any of it, but I think the finished result was maybe not as neat as it might have been but acceptable.  Here I only used two threads thickness and anchored them at the back again with double sided tape.

I then cut a bigger heart from the Nellie Snellen set of dies and as I love the script used the sentiment from the Verve set Poppy Birthday which is one of those all purpose sentiments, and I embossed it using Versamark and WOW Gold EP.  I used another snippet of the white card and stamped and cut out the butterfly which was part of a magazine freebie set.  This was also embossed with the Versamark and Gold EP.

Lastly it was matted on to a snippet of gold mirri card and mounted on to a cream square card.

Thank you for visiting my blog today.

Pat  x

I would also like to enter the following challenges:

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Use a Stamp.
Cuttlebug Mania - Anything Goes.
Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 194 where we use our leftover snippets/ pieces of paper and card etc.
Stamping Sensations - Sew Special.