It's all about the Christmas trees this month! I told you all, I love finding different ways to create trees! Today is all about taking a simple shape to create a tree and adding detail and texture with a little hand-stitching.
Before I had my Silhouette the most common Christmas tree I would create was by cutting paper into triangles. I always found ways to customize them by adding strips, shapes, layering, or adding different details. You might be surprised by how many ways you can customize a simple shape like a triangle!
I'm always on the lookout for a new way to customize these simple trees and naturally hand-stitching, being my favorite technique, was something I really wanted to incorporate.
One of the ways I love using hand-stitching is to stitch over the design on a patterned paper. It's easy and it adds detail with texture and dimension, two things I talk about often. I happened to come across several green, Christmas themed patterned papers that had fun "stitch-able" patterns.
So, I cut five different sizes of triangles out of five different green patterned papers for my trees. On three of them I added hand-stitching detail on top of the design on the patterned paper.
I know I've mentioned it before, but this is a great way to get starting with stitching if you are new and hesitant to try your own designs. All you have to do is pierce your holes directly onto the design. No tracing, drawing, or designing.
The rest of the layout is very simple. I felt like I had so much detail with the trees and my title and journaling that I didn't need to add much more.
Side note - the Christmas ornaments that Drew is making in the photos are still hanging on our tree today. I remember when I had my first Christmas tree on my own, as an adult and I always wanted it to have a specific color theme and perfectly matched ornaments. Then I had kids and our tree, over the years, has grown to include a wide range of ornaments and colors. Every ornament is special. There are homemade ornaments, ornaments from my childhood, and the ornaments we pick out together and add each year from our annual trip to Silver Dollar City. Our tree is a mismatched tree of memories and I wouldn't want it any other way.
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