Embroidered Pictures (in which I overcome the urge to keep a commissioned gift for myself)

May 22, 2013 by Anne 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, a friend approached me with a proposition: take some sweet old pictures from an old book and do something crafty with it.

Of course I couldn’t say no to that.

The book was a super cute children’s book from the 1950’s-ish (I forgot to look before I gave it back), and it had outlived it’s usefulness as a book. Some budding artist had taken to the pages with the finest of mediums, a ballpoint pen. It may or may not have been Ken.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with the pages that were less doodled.

I searched the Grand Rapids craft and thrift stores high and low for something that was perfect and found nothing.

So, in a fit of desperation, I grabbed a frame that I thought I could do something with, and lo and behold, it was perfect.

The frame came with a mat that had three spots for pictures, so I chose the cutest out of the book and popped them in.

And then I embellished them with a bit o’ string, left over originally from my cross-stitched Star Wars sampler and more recently from this string/nail art. If I recall correctly, I originally got the tangled mass of threads from a thrifted embroidery kit in which the pattern portrayed a bucking bronco. The cross-stitched bucking bronco has yet to come into existence.

Since this was to be a gift for a friend, Dianne, I chose words that sort of went with each picture but that definitely reminded me of her–create, inspire, and bless.

If you attempt a similar project, please learn from my mistakes. Choose paper that is fairly thick and not at all brittle. When jabbing the needle through the paper, don’t put holes too close together. And use colors that will pop from the page (the “inspire” word is a little hard to read because of the color I chose, as you can see). Some of my letters got a little wonky, but I just rock it and hope that no one will notice. 🙂

The hardest part of this craft was actually having to give it away in the end. But at least I know it is going to someone very, very special, and that makes it all worth it.

Many thanks to Michelle, who was the instigator of this delightful little craft and the finder of the inked book.

And finally, one of the suggested “tags” for this post is “mechanical bull.” I think I’ll add that just because, well, why not?

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