Paint & stitch shell

More than a week into the New Year and I haven’t done anything arty yet. My main focus at the moment is trying to get things a bit tidier, both physically and digitally. There are still bits out from making all the Christmas cards and part of me says I should put together a couple of cards with the leftovers rather than tidying them away again. Another part of me says I should just clear up the clutter so that I feel comfortable actually sitting down and working in my craft room. A third part is currently ignoring the craft room and is organising stuff on the computer instead…

I shall have to get creative soon though, as there is a family birthday coming up at the end of the month and another one at the start of February. At least I don’t have to think too much about what to do: I am still planning on making paint & stitch cards until everyone on my list has had one.

Talking of which, I have a few more paint & stitch cards from last year to post on the blog, so I’d better get started.

This card was made for my mother-in-law, so I delegated the job of choosing an image to my other half. After browsing my collection, he picked this floral shell. My first job was to decide how I was going to stitch it.

For the owl card I painted the leaves green and outlined them in green thread. For the cats card I didn’t use any paint on the leaves and flowers; I just stitched them in coloured thread. For this one, I decided to make it a “purist” paint & stitch card and use paint for the colour and outline everything in black. I needed a lighter touch for the segments of the shell, and used a small running stitch to mark them out.

Sticking with this basic paint & stitch formula is interesting. It relieves me of having to deal with a completely blank canvas every time I need to make a card. And, at the same time, I can tweak the details and try out different techniques and approaches to creating whichever image I’ve chosen.

If you are interested in learning more about the work that goes into creating these cards, take a look at my write-up of the paint & stitch card process.