I’m still working on my hand stitched greeting cards. They are all pretty simple and I’m not adding much stitching so I got three done today.

 This one is stitched with running stitch and stem stitch.

 I used back stitch to applique the rectangle of fabric down and then just simple cross stitch to couch the felt down.

This one I spent a bit more time one. I used chain stitch on the blue fabric following the outlines that were already on the fabric from sun printing. Then I used blanket stitch on one edge of the felt. I’ve decided that I am going to fuse these down to the card stock so there won’t be any additional stitching.

Do you make your own greeting cards? How do you make them? I’d love to hear your methods.

I had to get up early this morning for an appointment so I had a spare 45 minutes before I needed to go to work. I spent that time painting another layer on my leaf painting experiment. I also finished a second fabric collage for a card.

 Here’s one page. I sketched in a couple of leaf shapes and then painted them with gesso.

 Here’s the next fabric collage card. I used herringbone stitch to applique the blue pieces to the background.

 And a closer view. The felt has been couched down in a few places. You can see it still is elevated from the surface quite a bit.

I didn’t have much time today but I did get a little hand stitching done. I started on the cards that I showed you the other day.

This is the design where I began.

And here it is complete. I am not going to add much stitching to these, just little accents and enough to hold everything together. I use these for when I need a greeting card and I don’t want to spend a huge amount of time making them.

I decided to cut the smaller lino block and get a little practice before I tried the more complex block. Once I found the specific tools I liked, it went pretty quickly. I also found an interesting painting tutorial for doing lots of layers so I thought I’d give it a try.

Here is the design drawn on the block.

 Then I started carving. No injuries today!

 I tried printing, carved a little more off the background and printed again.

 Then I realized that I will have to make a corner block if I am going to do a full page design with these. Will have to figure that one out.

 Here is the painting technique I started. First I applied gesso and put some texture in to it. Let that dry, add a variety of paint colors with liquid acrylic paints. Then let those dry. Then add gel medium. Let that dry. There’s a lot of drying going on here.

 This is the second page. These are part of my journal so I decided I would do a two page spread.

 Then I put gesso on some leaves and printed them on to the pages.

 You overlap the leaves and put them wherever you want.

 Once the gesso is dry, then you go in with paint and add darkness around the edges of some of the leaves. Also, I added some paint into some of the leaves. Kind of gives the effect of skeleton leaves.

I was a bit limited on the leaves I had available in the middle of winter. Mostly I used dried leaves and houseplants. Once I finished the bottom layer of leaves, I painted it all over with gel medium again. It’s drying again and later I will add more layers. You just keep adding more layers until you’re happy with the result. I’ll show you more as I progress.

Our local fiber group is meeting next Friday and we’ll be carving Lino blocks. I haven’t ever done one before and it’s nice to try something new. Today I worked on a couple of designs for a 4″x 4″ block and a 2″ x 4″ block. I continued with the themes I have been using from Kyrgyz rugs. I am planning on making quite a bit of decoration for the yurt using these designs.

 Here is the 4″ x 4″ block. I cut out the design from paper and then covered one side with charcoal pencil and pressed that on the block to transfer the design.

 Here’s the journal I’m working in. I’m trying out different designs for the borders.