Recycled Cross Stitch Card

We visited Lancaster Creative Reuse on First Friday and again yesterday to close out the Mail Art celebration in honor of the Lancaster County postage stamp. It was such a pleasure to work with them; I certainly hope to do it again in the future. Tina and Vanessa were the lucky winners of Deluxe Travel Mail Art Kits. While we were there yesterday, the girls all worked on projects, my hubby was kind enough to corral the little one, and I did a little more shopping (it's addictive since the selection is constantly changing.)

One of my finds was a stained cross stitch piece made up of four smaller designs for a mere 30 cents. I brought it home and washed it, then tea stained it to even out the coloring. I separated the four smaller elements to use as focal points on cards. (I wish I had scanned it before I cut it!) I chose Card Patterns Sketch 150 and spent some time flipping through my stash of K&Company patterned papers to match colors and styles.

I originally had a light neutral solid paper at the top, but it needed a little something more. I dug out some of the 1840s bank ledger paper, and I liked the look of it. I may try one with an old dictionary page in place of the ledger paper. Papertrey Ink's Ocean Tides was a perfect match to the darker green stitching.

I realized I left a few of my mail art samples behind at Creative Reuse. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to go back to collect them!