Happy Valentine's Day!!

We were so tickled with the way our Valentine Postcard came out, we thought that today we'd show you the evolution of a cross stitch design. They are sew fun to create!

All our designs have very humble beginnings... many on the back of envelopes, fast food napkins, etc. etc.  We've been told that an artist should always carry a sketchbook, but at least we have a pencil at all times!

You can (sort of) see our design will have a rose, a heart with chocolates, two cupcakes, and balloons.

Cross stitch, as you might guess, and graph paper go hand in hand!

So that is the next step. We don't always sketch the entire design in at one time-- just enough to get started.

The sketch is scanned in, and we digitize right on top of it.

The "Happy" was recycled from the Happy Birthday design... we're not fans of re-creating the wheel if we don't have to. You can also easily duplicate parts of the design... like make an extra cupcake. We don't like overusing elements, though, so when we copy and paste, we often change... like turning the second cupcake into vanilla. Chocolate loves Vanilla!

The design is then printed out and more sketching is done to fill in differently areas...

We go back and forth this way until we're in love...

as many as five or six times. Below, you can see how we make sure all the areas are filled nicely, with the balloons and the swashes that come off the "H."

The digitizing program seems very simple-- 

it's also set up like graph paper, and you just click the squares with the color you want, then add outlines for backstitching. 

Overall, some features were hard to master, like ordering the colors properly, and using 1/4 crosses, 1/2 crosses, and 3/4 crosses to completely fill a design. We have really grown in this regard over the past year!

When complete, the design has to be run through the regular embroidery software, and if there are mistakes, you need to edit back in the cross stitch software, so there is quite a bit of back and forth there, too.

On the plus side, it is possible to get a really good stitch out on the first try... unlike a Cloud Club bird or sea creature which can take 3 or 4 trials before they are perfect. <3

The Fairy Frost fabric color we picked for this was called "Cupcake," and that is no lie!! LOL

Then it is play time, 

to come up with some cute ideas to finish the stitchouts.

We always wish we had more time for this phase, to make pillows, tablerunners, placemats, and more...

But Happy St. Patrick's Day and 

Happy Easter are right around the corner, so we have to move on!

Have a LOVELY Valentine's Day!

Carol

xox