Kelly has 4 gorgeous ways (and a bunch of tips & tricks) to use the new United We Flourish stamps & die combo, Stitched Together by Waffleflower.
Hello! Kelly Griglione here to share several tips and tricks to stamping with the newly released Stitched Together stamp set. This is the newest in the United We Flourish line, where Ellen Hutson partners with an amazing company and creates a unique stamp and die set. What makes these sets really special is that they are only available at Ellen Hutson, and only for a limited time. This particular set will make you look like an expert cross-stitcher, as once you've followed all the steps, you end up with a five-color floral globe! Talk about unique, I've never seen anything like it! I just love it, and I can't wait to show you more ...
The stamp set contains one stamp for each of the 5 colors that will make up the globe. To help you build your masterpiece in the easiest way, the stamps are numbered in the order that you stamp them.
Before I started stamping I got out the five ink pads I wanted to use, and put the coordinating blocks of stamps on top of the ink. This made it easier for me to make subsequent globes, as I already had everything laid out. The first stamp is the ocean, which I stamped in Catherine Pooler Ink's Mint To Be. This one is easy because you don't need to line anything up. Now it gets a little more detailed, but I'm going to walk you through what worked for me.
The lighter colored portion of the flower is next (Catherine Pooler Ink's Sweet Sixteen). I picked two areas that left no question where the cross stitch should go, since it was surrounded by ocean from the first stamp. These two areas are highlighted with the arrows on the left. TIP: Initially I only used one area to line up my stamp, but found that if you didn't have your stamp block completely horizontal, stitches in the other sections would be off. Using two areas to line up your stamp helps avoid this issue.
Now it's time to add details/shadows to the flowers with a darker color, Sugared Lavender. To line this one up I focused on the main rose area with the circular pattern. When you hold the stamp over the image, the stitches visually fill in the rest of the flower, making it easy to position.
The leaves, stamped in Green Tea, will complete the world. I focused on the two larger clusters of leaves to line these up. I thought this one would be a little easier than it was because the leaves should be filling in the only remaining spaces, but since my ocean color is so light there wasn't a ton of contrast to help guide me. Just make sure you choose two different areas to line up your stamp with.
Finally, you get to stamp the base of the globe. The important thing to remember on this step is to make sure to allow an even amount of space all the way around the semi circle. The first time I stamped this I lined up the stand so that it was touching the bottom of the globe. Well, that doesn't make sense because a globe should be suspended so it can spin. You can line up the stand with the bottom of the globe to start with, but make sure to then move it away from the globe one row before you stamp.
Now you're done! Let's take a look at some finished examples, and then I have a few more tips before you go.
Didn't this globe turn out so well?! The beauty is that since the main image is so interesting and impactful, you really don't need much else to complete the card. You'll see this in all the examples. For this card I wanted everything else to be white so the cross stitch really stands out. The panel is sewn onto the card base with a piece of lace from a tablecloth that had a hole in it (25 cents at a garage sale!) in between.
I was really excited to find this sentiment from Up the Happy, as it actually has the word "world" in it! Score! I split up the sentiment and stamped part of it above the globe, part of it embossed in gold below the globe, and the rest of it stamped below that.
This card is for my most fabulous friend in the world, but it could also be for the most fabulous mom in the world (especially if your mom cross stitches), or teacher in the world (globes are educational!) I stamped the globe on a cream base to give it a more homespun feel. The word "most" is handwritten on a piece of black cardstock. Remember, if you don't have the right stamp, sometimes you can just write it yourself! "Fabulous" is from Totally Fabulous by Julie Ebersole, "friend" is from Oh Deer by Julie Ebersole (retiring soon), and "in the world" is a portion of a stamp that comes with this set.
Did you notice those cute little cross stitched roses at the top? These stamps are also included in the set. There is only one flower image, but you can rotate it and change up the leaves like I did here to make it look like different flowers.
The sentiment on this card comes with the set, I just broke it up a little to be above and below the globe. I didn't have the right color of aqua for the card base, so I decided to use the same color ink that I used for the globe's stand. Can you guess what stamp is around the border?
It's the pair of Christmas trees from Holly Jolly by Julie Ebersole! I just needed a stamp that was solid so I could turn most of the margin aqua. I ended up liking the sharp angles of the trees when they were all stamped together because it adds some interest to the background.
The panel is inked around the edges with the same ink from the darker floral section, and I blended some of the ocean color around the edges of the white panel.
The last cross stitch stamp that I hadn't used yet is the cute heart. I decided to literally stamp the love around the sentiment.
To create the feeling of an embroidery hoop to frame the stitched hearts, I die cut the circular frame with holes in it from Mirror, Mirror by Brandi Kincaid. The holes were just begging to be stitched through, which supports the needle work theme of these projects very well. This would be such a cute tag, or you could also attach it to the front of a card.
Next I'd like to share a few tips that I came across while making these projects and playing around.
One tip for making sure you align the different pieces of the globe just right is to keep the stamp perfectly horizontal. Originally, I used some circular stamp blocks, which made it more difficult to keep the image horizontal. Lining up the image was much easier when I switched the stamp to a rectangular block.
If you didn't keep your stamp horizontal, you may end up with a few rows or columns of stitches pulling away from their neighbors. You can see this here, were the light purple columns of Africa are stamped too far to the right, leaving several white gaps. When this happened, my heart sank and I really didn't want to give up on the image since the rest of it was pretty well aligned. So I sharpened my colored pencil and drew a very thin line through the white space. You'll see that even though the color is not close at all to the light or dark purple, as it's pink, just taking away the white space makes the problem start to go away.
Here I filled in all the white spaces in Africa, and now it doesn't look off anymore. It would look even better had I used a purple pencil!
My final tip is to think about using a MISTI. Although you can absolutely stamp it freehand, the MISTI is great if you were planning on making more than one globe like I did here. I only have one MISTI so I had to space it out carefully. The trick here is to always use paper in the same dimension as the one you start with. As long as every future panel is 4" wide for this particular set up, I'll be able to stamp my water in the bottom right corner, stamp the light florals in the bottom left corner, flip the paper over and stamp the darker florals in the upper left corner, and finally stamp the leaves in the upper right corner. I'm going to make a large batch of these to have on hand while the stamps are still arranged on my misti.
Well, what do you think, folks? Are you ready to try this set out? I can't wait to play around with different color combinations, especially now that it's set up on the misti.
Be sure to mark this post to come back to once you are ready to stamp!
Thanks for looking!
-Kelly
-Kelly
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