JustRite Week: Day Three

Hope you've had a chance this week to follow along with JustRite Week at Stamper's Dream! All week the Dream Team is featuring new holiday stamp sets by JustRite. Here's the posting schedule again:

Monday: Leslie, Christina, Michelle
Tuesday: Leslie, Michelle, me
Wednesday: Karen, Denise, me
Thursday: Denise, Laurie, Michelle
Friday: Christina, Laurie, Karen

Today, I'm working with Hearts Come Home, a set of six borders and six centers.

My heart always goes out to those who are separated from loved ones during the holidays, due to distance, deployment, or any other circumstance. The "Hearts Come Home For Christmas" sentiment in this set is such a sweet reminder that we're always in each other's hearts even when we can't be together in person.

The shapely die-cut behind the sentiment was cut with the new Frame Back Ornate #4 Bigz die by Sizzix. I arranged it where I wanted it and then just trimmed off the overhang on the left. I trimmed out the poinsettia (colored with Copics) from one of the other centers in this set and used it as a corner accent for the sentiment. I used the paper tole technique to give it some dimension and dressed it up with a crystal in the center and a dusting of ultrafine clear glitter on the petals.

Additional accents are some Zva Creative crystal flourishes (I used scraps left over from cutting the original flourish into smaller pieces), Kaisercraft adhesive pearls, satin ribbon, and distressing and hand-stitching around the perimeter.

By the way, I recently got an email asking about the hand-stitching. I haven't answered it yet and can't even find it anymore in the mess that is my inbox, so I'll share here for now. For some crazy reason, I've been hand-stitching on my cards instead of using my machine. It all started because my 3-year-old now scales the baby gate to get into my craft room, where he loves to squeeze the foot pedal on my sewing machine. Between him running out all of my thread and me being terrified he'd get his finger under the needle (even though it takes all ten of his tiny fingers just to squeeze the foot pedal), I decided to remove the the needle and thread from the machine altogether. Yes, I know I should just not let him play with the sewing machine, but that foot pedal will easily entertain him for fifteen minutes or more, so I've caved. Well, I went to machine-stitch on my card one day, but of course the needle and thread were missing. Get this ... I was too lazy to re-thread the machine, but not too lazy to hand-stitch - how wacky is that? The hand-stitching is WAY more time-consuming, but I found that I liked it better because I have more control at the corners. I am not normally overly neurotic about precision, but it was driving me crazy when I got to the corners mid-stitch. Please tell me I'm not alone! Or am I? 

On that note, I think I'll go thread my machine again :)

Cheers!