Free Cross Stitch Pattern and tips to plan a giveaway.

 

 Free Cross Stitch Pattern and tips to plan a giveaway.  

 

Hi everyone, I have been doing some Christmas stitching, this time it is a small beaded cross stitch ornament for a Christmas tree or  it could be used as a scissor fob. It is my own design, I will share the pattern in my next post. It is stitched using DMC stranded cotton threads and Mill Hill beads.

 

I have also included the link to the pattern for the free Winter Birdhouse cross stitch pattern, I hope you like it! I have designed it showing the different coloured fabric backgrounds that you could use, it is amazing how different a cross stitch can look if the colour of the background is changed.    

 

 

 

Winter Birdhouse Pattern

 

 

Close up of beaded stitching

 

 

 

 

Stitching news and tips on how to plan a giveaway

 

I have yet to finish the Peacock Box, I am just lining the insides of the box and then I will be ready to trim the outside, it is looking quite nice. I am going to use this box to place some of my giveaway themes into. I receive quite a lot of questions about my giveaways, mainly asking how I do them.  I think the main tip I would give is to plan them, I tend to do this well in advance.

 

Where to start?  Think of a theme and a colour, it could be a famous person, for example Jane Austen or Marie Antoinette,   a cartoon character, a film, a place, basically anything that may inspire you into creating something special. If you have a theme and a colour you then have something to work towards, you can then choose the threads you need and start to collect items over the coming months. 

 

I have gathered a few tea bag holders, some metal charms,  a charm bracelet,  digital images to play around with, shrink plastic,  silk fabric for printing through my printer and some wooden accessories and boxes, all based around the theme I have chosen.  There is no guarantee I will use everything but it gives some structure to your ideas. Of course there is always a crossed stitched item to be included too!

 

I did not do a giveaway in 2012 as I was too busy but I am working on one at the moment, no promises when it will be ready, but it will certainly be next year sometime. 

 

This part of the post is for my readers who may not have seen my giveaways before. If you would like to see some of my previous themed giveaways you can see them below, just click on the blue headings. PLEASE NOTE THEY ARE ALL CLOSED!

 

The Paris Giveaway   in 2011.   I chose the theme when I saw the digital images on a shop in Etsy, I liked the image, I ordered it over the internet and the PDF was delivered within a few hours. I then chose the colour pink to compliment the black,  I thought felt would be nice to make the needlebook and then added cupcakes to the front because of the cafe theme.  I then made polymer clay pins for the needlebook. If you check out the link and scroll down the page you will see all of the items.     

 

The Marie Antoinette giveaway in 2010 For this one I saw the free cross stitch pattern and thought about Marie Antoinette, I then chose the silk because I know she loved dressing in gorgeous fabrics, the lace was a very special piece of vintage lace I had in my stash, it is so fine and beautiful I knew I had to include that! If you scroll. down the page you will see the silk photo fabric I used for the images on the box lid and the bed thread holder.    

 

So you get the idea, think of a theme and the rest just flows!    

 

Welcome to all of my readers and new followers.

 

Until next time Happy Stitching!