Good morning SCT readers! I’m Julia Stainton from Ontario Canada. I’m a busy mom of five, will soon celebrate 28 wonderful years married to the love of my life and we live in a century old farmhouse that we are never finished renovating. Over the years, I’ve had wonderful opportunities designing in the crafting industry from working with many design teams, having designs published and working in product design. Each opportunity is a chance to grow and explore my creativity. These days if I’m not designing or creating paper crafts, I love reading, sewing and spending time on Lake Huron.
As far as I can remember back I’ve been crafting and creating, inspired by my grandmothers, who were both very talented seamstresses. In 1999 I found the most beautiful scrapbook in a children’s clothing store and have been hooked on paper crafting ever since.
There are so many different design elements that can make paper crafting unique and fun. For me it’s all about texture and I love incorporating it into my card and scrapbooking designs. It’s easy to do by mixing media together such as several types of papers, fabric, twine and buttons. Even metals have a texture.
One of my favorite ways to add texture is with felt or stitching. I’ve been sewing since before I started paper crafting so this is a natural pairing for me. Both elements add a wonderful handmade look and when you stitch felt to create your own embellishments, you’ll have your own unique project that can’t be found anywhere else.
Creating stitched felt embellishments is easy and takes much less time than it looks! If you’ve never tried hand stitching it’s a very simple process. Felt is so easy to stitch through, especially if you use 100% pure wool felt. I love the felt from Taylored Expressions as it is so soft and the colors are simply amazing.
The quickest way to create felt embellishments is to die-cut the felt with dies you have on hand. These projects use dies from Maya Road such as the Vintage Button Card Die and the Flower Die set. Once the felt is die-cut, add stitching using a simple straight stitch. That’s up and down through the felt and can also be called a running stitch. I don’t worry about stitching perfection. In fact, the unevenness even adds to the whimsical look. Stitching on buttons is also a fun addition to the felt embellishments and add even more texture to the design.
Once the embellishments are created, they can be added to cards or scrapbook layouts using a hot glue gun or a liquid adhesive. I’ve layered mine on cards over some patterned paper from the Simple Stories Domestic Bliss Line and other various scraps.
Supply List: Patterned Paper: Simple Stories, various; Saucy Authentique Life Cards, Authentique Papers; Felt: Taylored Expressions; Lovely Stamp Set: Essentials by Ellen, Jet Black Archival Ink, Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink: Ranger; Gold Bulldog Clips, Dies by Maya Road; Embroidery Floss: DMC; Twine: Lawn Fawn; Solar White Card Stock: Neenah; Tiny Attacher: Tim Holtz
Thank you for joining me today on the SCT blog! You can find more of my work by following me here:
~ Julia Stainton
Beautiful and great ideas! Thanks for sharing.
Wow!
These are amazing!
These are awesome! Love the soft colors! TFS!
So pretty!
Beautiful! You are talented!
What a wonderful, and beautiful, idea! I’m currently making a baby album for a friend, and I’m now going to add some felt embellishments in wonderful pastel colors! Thanks for the inspiration!
I didn’t know that you can use die cuts on felt. Thanks for the info.
Awesome flowers.