Just Us Girls Challenge - Sew Easy!

Hello again! It's Saturday! Time for another Just Us Girls challenge! Today, Mona has a challenge that is "sew" easy! That's right...the challenge is to sew on your card. Now Mona is the queen of this technique, if you've ever seen any of her beautiful cards! You can use any kind of sewing for this challenge too. Machine sewing, hand sewing, and even faux stitching!If you don't know what faux stitching is, you can get instructions on SCS with this tutorial. It's very easy and I really like that technique. (You can also see how I used it on this card.) However, I recenly purchased a cheap Pixie Craft Sewing Machine by Singer at Walmart before Christmas. It was on sale for about $35, so I thought I'd give it a try. Let me tell you it works like a charm! Look what I did with it.I've had this jeans pocket stamp (yes that's a stamp, not real jeans!) from my LSS one day while I was standing in line. It just called to me to pick it up...and I did and this is the first time I'm using it! The stamp is from Judi Kins and I inked it with Faded Jeans Distress Ink from Ranger/Tim Holtz. It really is the color of faded jeans...amazing! When I took my sewing machine out of the box, it was already threaded with yellow thread. Perfect, since jeans usually have yellow stitching. So I went to work following the stitch lines on the pocket. Here's a closeup of it. I really like the way it came out...it looks so real! The dp is Basic Grey's Bittersweet, and I paired it with Regal Rose. I sewed the dp to the cardstock with one of the three zig-zag stitches on the machine. I ran the white mat through the Swiss Dots cuttlebug folder. The sentiment is from Artful INKables newest set called Love Ya Lots. Love that sentiment! Those hearts coming out of the pocket is something I picked up at Target's dollar spot probably 3 years ago! They were connected together, but when I took them out of the box, they all came apart. So I had to manipulate them into the pocket and I added a tiny piece of ribbon to match the bow on top. Those little hearts on the sentiment tag are from the Martha Stewart heart border punch. It's the little confetti that is left after punching.

I'm pretty happy with the way this came out. It was just what I imagined when I was thinking all day about what I was going to do, which rarely happens, right?

The JUGs team would like to see what you do with your sewing project. We know lots of you like this technique because we see it a lot out there. But if you are new to this technique, try it...you'll love it! The faux stitching is great too. So please stop by the JUGs blog and see what the other DT members have done with this technique. You can also go to their personal blogs to read about how they created their cards to get more inspiration.

Kristin Bueter
Pam Imholz
Alicia Weiman
Dana Gustafson
Maria Levine
Mona Pendleton
Tracey Cuccia

Thanks for stopping in today and enjoy your weekend!