Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 192

This time, at Crafty Cardmakers, we're playing Tic-Tac-Toe. Although were I come from, that's known as xs and os. The grid allows lots of possibilities, and you can follow any horizontal, vertical or diagnonal line.

I've followed the left-hand vertical line, so my card includes gems, stitching and has a summer theme.

I started with a Tonic Sew Pretty die. Now, I really like this range, but I can't help but think that whoever designed them hadn't done much embroidery on paper (or maybe they're just really, really clever.) That's because, to me, the obvious way to start and finish your thread on the back of paper embroidery is to use sticky tape, and these gorgeous dies just don't have enoough solid area to do that. So, after cutting out the shape, I stuck the die cut to a contrasting piece of card, and then used a paper-piercer to follow the holes through both thicknesses. I stitched the holes with stitches 2, 3 or 4 holes long depending on the degree of curvature using my usual machine embroidery thread. (I don't own a sewing machine and any attempt at using one would probably end up with a visit to Accident and Emergency.) I then accented some of the swirls with stichy gems. for the background, I got out a punch I've had for a long time - in fact, I think I used it in my first ever DT card at Crafty Cardmakers in July 2010. If you're at all interested, the post is here.

Anyway, you can see I've got stitching and gems. What about summer? Well, the summer theme is the butterflies, of course!

Apart from that, all I've added is some matting. I had intended to add some flowers, but when I saw how these elements combined, I decided to leave well alone!

I hope you can join us this fortnight.