iNSD Stitching Layout by Paige Evans

Happy International Scrapbook Day friends! I have a full day of festivities happening over in my Happy Scrappy Place Facebook Group including 25 challenges with prizes, 9 free cut files, a live with me, and giveaways!! My challenge is to create a layout featuring hand stitching!

It's no secret that I love hand stitching. I think my favorite layouts ever are ones that feature embroidery. There's just something about the tactile texture and dimension and life it adds that I keep trying it over and over again on different papers in all my collections. Here is a take with Wonders!

I began by picking a paper to embroider - there were 6 that I was debating and I chose this one because I thought it was more simple. HAHAHAHA!! Boy was I wrong lol. This is Paper 22 with the tile squares. Next I think I'll embroider the large mandala on Paper 9 - that is if I recover from this project lol.

I grabbed a ruler and a paper piercer and made a hole every 1/8" vertically and horizontally across every edge of the tile squares. Then I just eyeballed making the holes through the flowers and inner designs, trying my best to keep them 1/8" apart. It took about an hour to two hours just to pierce the holes.

Then I grabbed my DMC embroidery floss boxes and found colors to match the paper. I first did a chain link stitch around every square. Then I stitched the inner flourishes with a backstitch. Lastly, I came back in with white thread and stitched all of the flowers also with a basic backstitch and added a few long stitches through the petals. It took 3 entire days of stitching from 7am-7pm with breaks for food and other life things. It equaled about 32 hours of work. Worth it? Yes. But whoa. I had a time constraint to get it done for today, otherwise I probably would have spread it out over a much longer time span. Anyway, I love the whole process and I'm so pleased with the results :)

I left one of the 16 squares stitch free for a space to add a photo. I printed a photo of sleeping Jane to 3" square and added it to the empty space. I kept the embellishing to a SUPER minimum because I didn't want to cover up hardly any of the stitching at all - I wanted to let all that hard work shine! I cut a flower wreath Chipboard Sticker in half, peeled off some of the layers of chipboard to make it thinner, and tucked the pieces under the photo.

For the title, "CAR" is made with the white Mini Foam Thickers from Pick-Me-Up, and the "NAP" is made from a mix of pink letters from the Epoxy Phrase Stickers - I always like to have a set of phrase stickers that I can pick and choose letters from to create custom words. Then I added a yellow "dream" Banner Sticker below.

For the journaling, I tucked a "The Sweet Life" card from the Ephemera Die Cuts under the top right corner of the photo and wrote the caption with a blue pen. This photo was taken driving home from Utah last September after my Grandma Doris' funeral. We had gotten Jane this soft pink sweater at BYU (go Cougs!) and Jane was wearing her Great Grandma's pink pearls. She doesn't like how her ears feel when we drive through the mountains so she wears her headphones to counteract the pressure she says (not sure the science behind that lol). She looked so sweet and calm and precious, a tender moment that had to be documented.

And that's all there is to it! I jest lol. It was a labor of love :) But I enjoy every minute of the process of scrapbooking and creating and making pretty things! How about you, do you enjoy hand stitching?

I hope you are inspired by this layout and pick up my Wonders collection - it would be SO FUN to see your take on this layout or another embroidered page!

Can't wait to see what you stitch and be sure to hop over to my Happy Scrappy Place Facebook Group to join the International Scrapbook Day fun!

SUPPLIES: Patterned paper, stickers, die cuts, embellishments: WONDERS; Thread: DMC embroidery floss