I stitched the applique center portions today. I was going to cut the edges but decided I should wait until I got home and use my rotary cutter. I’m just going to cut straight along the edges and make the edges even.

 If you enlarge the photo you can probably see the stitching. The entire time I was stitching this, I kept seeing the blue negative shapes from the original design.

I finished the stitching on my two Valentine’s Day cards. Now I just have to fuse them down to the card stock and write something “sweet” inside.

 I think I’m going to use this one, although with the stitching, I like them both.

Here’s an extra one. Perhaps I can just use this one for next Valentine’s Day.

Here’s my next stitching project. I made the yellow felt piece yesterday and fused the blue cut piece down to it this morning. Now I need to stitch it down. I will trim the outside edge once I stitch the middle section down. The right side edge is really thin and I thought it would be better to stitch and make it secure before I cut around the edge.

It’s getting close to Valentine’s Day and I usually make a card for my sweetie. He would be disappointed if I bought him one now. So I thought I would make a shadow applique to put on the card.

 This was my original design. I already had this fabric with fusible on the back. So I just cut it out, found a background and fused it down.

 I ended up cutting the applique pieces with a craft knife so I had two appliques. I think I like this one better.

I then covered them with silk organza. Now to stitch them down and attach them to a card. I’ll do the stitching this week and I’ll show you the result soon.

I did a final layer on my leaf painting. I’m sure I could add more but I think it’s enough at this point. I will be doing another  one anyway and since this is just going into my studio journal, I decided to stop.

 Here’s the whole spread. I really enjoyed painting this because if you “mess up”, you can always paint over it on the next layer.

 Here’s a little closer view.

And the other page a little closer. You can find the directions for this on Create Mixed Media.

Today I met with my local group and we carved stamps. We had a great time and the stamps turned out great.  I also put another layer on my leaf painting and fused the fabric down on my stitched cards.

 Here are the cards all finished up. I just took fusible webbing and fused the fabric to the paper card.

 Here’s another layer finished on the leaf painting. I think I will add a few more layers yet. This is what we’re going to do for our next monthly meeting. I think I’ll do the next one on a canvas.

 This afternoon our group met and carved stamps. This is Louise’s stamp based on frost patterns. Isn’t it cool?

 Here are some of Jan’s designs.

 And another of Jan’s designs.

 Here is one of my stamps partially carved out.

 These are more of my stamps. You will see these in the future as I have plans to make some wall hangings with these.

 Here are a couple of stamps that Carole carved.

 These are Bunny’s prints of ginkgo leaves.

 And Bunny carving her take of the frost design.

 Here’s Bunny’s butterfly stamp.

 This is one of Carole’s prints.

 Here’s Bunny’s leaf stamp.

 And prints of her butterfly stamp. She is going to work further into these with pen or colored pencil.

 Here is Louise inking up her stamp. I forgot to get a photo of her stamped image. We had a great time.