Fascinating Aida

because that is the name of the stitching material in the Sampler kit and I find embroidery fascinating. Well I did do a class in it for a while and have the equivalent of an AS level award for my work. Go me. Or rather not go me as I only really cross stitch these days!
Plus, it is a blatant excuse to link to a very funny song by the singing group of the same name.

In my sampler kit was a huge piece of Aida and I had the wild idea to try some embroidery on it and use it as the base of my layout. In the end when I was done I stuck it onto the cream cardstock from the kit, but it did kind of work

 I put the Aida on a frame in order to stitch the circles. After a bit of trial and error I found it was easiest to first punch a circle out of paper and pin it to the material; then stitch the edge of the circle and then fill in using long stitch. I tended to start in the middle and work out to the edges. 

I was most chuffed to note that the threads in the kit were a perfect match to the colours in my photo.

I managed to remember how to chain stitch for my title. I was glad that most of the letters had straight lines!

After sticking the aida to the cardstock I punched holes around the edge with a pokey stick and backstitched it all down. I added a few more stitches in order to secure that gorgeous crochet ribbon.

Quite a few of the embellishments look radically different from when they came out of the pizza box!
The long strip of paper down the left hand side was yellow but I needed more orange so swiped an orange gelato stick over it and made a colourwash with water. All the papers were given faux stitching around the edge.

The fabric buttons also had a colour change. I tried a few things but in the end the best colour again came from using gelatos and water. They needed a LOT of drying time.
The doily was one of the Maya Road kraft ones. I covered it in gesso and then painted it with blue watercolours

There was a time during the making of this layout where I thought I had only succeeded in creating a huge mess but I am glad I persisted as I am very pleased with how it has turned out. Maybe I will go back to really loving embroidery again!