Stitching on cards has been around for a number of years, and was really popular back before lockdown, before it went away a little - but it is having another moment so Concord and 9th released several dies to help you stitch some details to your cards this month. I'm doing a feature article with them for an upcoming Die Cutting Essentials magazine, but in the meantime, I had a play with the halo piercing die this weekend to show you a couple of different looks you can get from it.
If you've not stitched on card before - its really easy - needle in one hole, follow the line, out the next. What I did first I would not recommend if you've never done it before - I decided to make a Christmas card with metallic thread on white glitter card - whilst the die did a brilliant job, seeing the lines in the glitter card was not so easy, so I would recommend starting with plain card for your first attempt. However, the effects of metallic thread on glitter card are pretty stunning - we will be adding a nice range of glitter threads to the store shortly so if you don't have any, hang fire, we got you.
I used a blue metallic thread and just started at 12 noon, and worked my way around the pattern clock wise (I had to use 2 lengths of thread as doing it with one length long enough would mean constant tangles. I just secured both with a tiny bit of tape in the middle of the pattern. Once complete I mounted it onto a card and added a matching blue glitter frame using Kristina Werners' delicate thin frame die using Sapphire Glitter card to add a nice finish to the edge of the card. The sentiment in the centre is cut from pale blue card using another other stitching die - the wild meadow one - and I just back stitched around the border with the same thread. I am afraid I committed the cardinal sin of clearing my desk and now I cannot for the life of me remember where the sentiment came from. Sorry.
For the second card I wanted to get more colourful so I switched from metallic thread to embroidery threads. I cut the die into some pink card and then picked 4 shades of thread in pinks and purples and used just one of the 6 strands from each colour so it wasn't too thick to go through the holes. I started with the longest "spike" on the pattern in bright pink, then switched to lavender on either side of the pink, pale lilac on either side of that then a dark purple-blue for the shortest "spike". Again I started at noon, worked my way around the clock for each colour and again used 2 lengths per colour.
I wanted to leave the centre exposed this time to show that the pattern doesn't need a centre. I die cut birthday from the sapphire glitter card and then stamped a 2 part sentiment from the Greetery's Sentiment Suite Birthday above and below in Versafine Twilight to match the card colour as closely as I could.
Hopefully that's given you a couple of ideas of how much fun stitching dies can be and what creative results you can get with them by just switching up the card and the threads.
Happy Crafting!
Tara
