Ready for SPRING!!

As usual, I am WAY ready for spring and making it harder to wait because I start thinking about it really early.  But for those who want to know, the first day of spring is three weeks from today!!

I'm posting today a few cards featuring Creative Impressions twine.  I luv this stuff and use it regularly for sewing, tying off ribbons and tags, and layering with ribbons to give them more body when I tie bows.  Its got a great organic earthiness which I like to incorporate into my work.

In this first card I used CI twine in a natural color to embellish twill ribbon with sewn "x's", french knots on the little cotton frame and tying a knot on the yellow button to unify the whole piece.

This could be a valentine, but works well anytime.  I borrowed from the "hello" in the background paper and stitched the word on a simple cotton panel, outlined a Bits of Bling heart and x's at the corners to visually anchor the front panel.

I love using this paper piecing technique.  I take some strips of patterned papers, scratch up the edges and piece them over a black card stock panel.  Then, pulling colors from the patterned paper, I stitched stems and a border with CI twine and used Bits of Bling flowers and pearls.  

This is a similar card using flower brads with Bits of Bling as centers for the flowers.  A little pink Bits of Bling butterfly at bottom right finishes the piece.

Here are the papers I started with.  The top two are both sides of a double sided paper and the bottom to are coordinating papers from a paper stack I picked up someplace.