Fathers Day Card

It's Fathers Day tomorrow, so best wishes to all dad's out there, I hope you all have a lovely day.

My dad is on holiday this week, (I hope there's some nice weather for him and mum, instead of this constant rain and grey skies engulfing us). I am however, seeing them next week, along with my sister and her boyfriend who have just moved into a flat together. I'm very excited about seeing them all, and being a guest of my sister for a change! It'll be lovely for us all to be together, and have a good old catch up. It doesn't happen as often as I like, as I live in Sheffield and they live in Northamptonshire, especially as Chris (as a pub manager) works at weekends, and I also have to 'feed' my cells some weekends too.

One 'advantage' of Chris working evenings and weekends however, is that I have plenty of time at home alone to spend stitching away in front of trashy TV shows (like don't tell the bride) and girly chick flicks that he, like most men, try to avoid as much as possible. Anyway, This has given me time to design and make a new cross stitch card for my dad this Fathers Day.

First of all I created the design. I kept it simple, with the classic 'Happy Father's Day' message, and created a simple geometric border to frame it beautifully. This has the added advantage of the card having a more masculine appeal; it's easy for cross stitch to be 'girly' with flowers, hearts, and cute animal designs, but harder to create masculine designs that aren't all about football, cars, or beer, none of which is relevant design material for my father, who prefers walking and cycling. What do you think?

Last time I made a card I simply trimmed and glued the design onto the card. This worked ok, but I wanted to try something different this time, so I carefully measured the size of the design, and cut an aperture out of the front of the card, so that the cross stitch could be glued to the inside of the card, with the design showing through to give it a neat edge, and a more professional finish. As I used green card, I used a green pencil to mark the aperture before carefully cutting it out. Next, I trimmed the cross stitch to give a small overlap, and after carefully checking the positioning and aperture size, glued it into place.

It definitely has a cleaner finish when on display.  However, I felt that it needed a little something still, to bring a bit more interest to the card. After a quick search through my stash of crafty items, I decided to add a bit of sparkle using a variety of different sized gold sequins. I just as easily could have trimmed a ribbon and added that, or cut a card border using a different colour. However the glitz won out, and after selecting the sequins and positioning them on the card I carefully glued them in place with the aid of a match to try and prevent getting glue everywhere! It proved mostly successful, and as I was using a clear drying craft glue it didn't matter too much where some glue was visible.

The inside of the card, however, was less neat as the back of the stitching could easily be seen. to hide this and neaten it up, I trimmed a sheet of pale green paper to a size just smaller than the card, and folded it in half. I then carefully glued it in place along the fold and around the edges of the paper, ensuring that the reverse of the cross stitch was covered. After leaving it overnight to dry, and having written a message to my dad inside, the card was finished and good to go. What do you think?

Happy Fathers Day!