PTI March Blog Hop

The inspiration picture at this month's Blog Hop at Papertrey ink really appealed to me.

I can sew a bit, so the idea of combining cards and embroidery sounded like a great plan. I didn't realise how much harder it would be to try and achieve a satin stitch on card. After an epic fail, I decided to find a way to cheat!

I made a background using slate alcohol ink with lots of blending solution. When it was within a whisker of being dry I stamped some of the flowers from PTI "Larger than Life" in smoky shadow ink. Because it was still a tiny bit wet, the ink blurred just a little. I then left the card to dry completely and stamped a few more flowers that stayed crisp.
I'd originally intended to sew straight onto the card, but when that didn't work I covered a piece of card in scor tape and lay piece after piece of embroidery floss onto it, as close together as possible.

Once I'd covered a big enough area, I die cut the butterfly from PTI Flower favourites, running it back and forth a couple of times to make sure I cut all the threads.
Before I mounted then to the card I stitched a couple of antenna, and wrapped some black embroidery floss around the centre of the butterfly. They're held in place with scor tape.
The sentiment is the new PTI Ombre sentiments. I nearly didn't get it but I'm so pleased I did. In fact, I'm hopeful this is just the first of a series of similar stamps for different occasions.