US Designer Spotlight on ME

Throughout the month of July, Unscripted Sketches is celebrating Christmas and bringing you something new every.single.day! A couple of times a week, this includes spotlighting one of the Design Team members and today it's my turn! So if you want to know more about me, check out my interview over at Unscripted Sketches.

But before you go there, I have a project to share with you!

Dies are all the rage and there are a wealth of shapes that you can choose from! But dies can be used for more than paper! In this project, I used two different dies from Papertrey Ink to create felt pins. Take a look:

Since we're celebrating Christmas in July, my first pin is for the holidays. I die cut the white felt with a stocking die and added a little stitching to the center. This accomplishes 2 things - it dresses up the stocking and also anchors the pin to the backside of the stocking. I used embroidery floss and simply stitched three intersecting lines like this:

Nothing fancy. Then I added a bead to the center of the "star" and one at each end of the center vertical line of stitching. Then a couple extra stitches at the ends of the "arms" like so:

I know - those are the worst Photoshop graphics ever but hopefully you get the point! To finish up the pin and have it ready to present as a little gift, I created a small "card" - this one features two layers - a back and a frame that was stamped in White Daisy ink (CTMH). The frame was cut using another PTI die and then stamped with an image from the Garden Variety stamp set. To attach the pin to the base, I simply punched 2 holes in the base and slid the pin out one hole and back through the other, locking the pin in place.

Here's another felt pin I also created using PTI dies:

I die cut 2 flowers from different colors of felt and adhered them together with Scor-Tape. The pin is then anchored to the flower back by way of the stitched on button. To add a little more detail, I added a few French knots to the petals on the larger flower. There's a great video tutorial on how to make French knots here...they're really not as hard as they look! This card was then created featuring a flower pot that was stamped with border stamps (look closely - that flower pot is the section that was cut out of the frame in the 1st pin's card!! No waste here!!) The pin was attached to the card in the same way and there you go - another little gift for someone special.

I hope you enjoyed these projects and give it a try yourself! And thanks for joining me on my Unscripted Sketches spotlight day! I'll be back with the weekly US sketch tomorrow! See you then!