Dreams Are For Chasing | Pol Prince | Sewing

Hi everyone! It's Pol here today with a new layout featuring sewing.

I really enjoyed doing this one because I love hand stitching on my pages, and it turned out even better than I'd imagined.

I used a couple of Maggie Holmes collections for this page, 'Chasing Dreams' and 'Bloom', and our FREE daffodil cut file designed by Emma.

To start off with, I printed a picture of a mandala off the Internet, taped it to my white cardstock using washi tape, and pierced holes at regular intervals through the template. I used a Sizzix large stamping mat which doubles as a piercing mat, underneath my card. 

Once I'd carefully peeled the template off, I selected my thread colours. I was so tempted to do a rainbow effect mandala but I decided it might be too full on with my brightly coloured daffodils photo! So I went for blue ombre instead. I chose 5 shades of blue, ranging from the darkest to the lightest. As you can see these blend perfectly together to create the ombre effect.

Once I'd finished my hand stitching (this took quite a while!) I trimmed the edges of my cardstock and matted it onto my patterned paper. 

I had already cut the free daffodil cut file, and coloured it using distress inks on a sponge. It went with my photo of daffodils perfectly!

I wanted as much of the mandala as possible to show, so I placed my photo in the bottom right hand corner with a tag and the daffodil cut file tucked behind it.

I then embellished my page using 'Chasing Dreams' and 'Bloom' chipboard and stickers.

I tried to keep the embellishments fairly minimal in order for the mandala and the photo to be the main focus of the page. Although I do like little clusters and couldn't resist one in the top left hand corner of my layout to balance the page.

I hope you've enjoyed my layout and learning a bit more about sewing on layouts. We have a whole month featuring sewing, so do pop by regularly, or sign up to the blog, to see what our creative team have made!