Work it Wednesday: Time for a Challenge!

The WINNER for last week's challenge and the Precious Emmy and Rainy Day Sophie digi stamps is MANDIE!!! >Mandie, I'll be trying to contact you, but if you see this and haven't heard from me (check your spam) please shoot me an e-mail at The Cafe.

Hi and welcome to a new Work it Wednesday at the Character Cafe blog! This week it’s my, Tesa’s, pleasure to host both a tutorial (or maybe more of a tips and tricks section) and the challenge of the Week.

BUT FIRST! Don’t forget that there is a Blog Hop going on celebrating the new images of the month. The Hop starts HERE, and you can earn a discount, find a freebie AAAND win a prize. If you're at the end of the HOP, go HERE to finish up. Hey, why not double up - if you participate in the challenge, you can also win two images of your own choice - maybe two of the new releases you've seen in the hop.

This week, I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite stitching techniques and a tip or two. I love stitching on my cards and projects. It ads both a design element and some texture to the project. But it's also time consuming. Faux stitching is a great alternative. You can use a pen and simply draw the stitches free hand or with a ruler and it's done in no time. If you want a more textured look you can combine doodling the stitches with paper piercing.

You need a paper piercer or a needle, a ruler and something to use as a ground that you can pierce in (sorry sometimes my English simply isn't good enough!). There are this In Stitch mat from Bazzill, or you could use a mouse mat, or like me, the stamping mat that came with all the Inque Boutiqe's See D's stamps. And then you simply start poking holes in the size you want your stitches.

Since I do this quite often, I've made a couple of templates with different sizes of stitches. When doing the faux stitching I like to have empty space between the stitches. After the holes are pierced, you simply doodle the stitches. Done. This is the card I made, using the cute July image Bertie and Friend. I printed two images and cut out an extra flower and butterfly which I've added on pop up dots. Check out the butterfly tail! That is my other favourite faux (or real) stitching technique!

There are stitching templates to buy, but I'm not really that into them - to big, to big stitches, and they cost money. I usually do my own templates by stamping an image/shape on a scrap paper, put it on my project and pierce away.

The stamp I used looks like stitches but I didn't want the stars, so this is a way to alter the stamped image too. The pattern the piercing makes is really neat as is, but if you want you can also doodle stitches wich will make the pattern pop more.

While thinking about what tips and techniques I'd use in this post, I also made me a pin cushion using the fab Sunflower image from the July release. Thought I'd share it since it is somewhat connected to the rest of the post.

Now over to the

CHALLENGE !!!

Yes, you've guessed it right! The challenge for this week is to use STITCHING on your project. Hand stitching, machine stitching or faux stitching - the choice is yours!

Post your project on your blog, and/or you can upload to SCS using TCCWIW4 and link it using Mr Linky at the end of this post no later than Thuesday 28th 12 pm EST. If you don't have a blog, please email your card/project to tesabroman@yahoo.com . You are free to combine this challenge with others, but we ask you to mention this challenge in your blog post.

AND!!! There is a prize! A randomly selected participant will win two Character Cafe images of her choice. AND a GUEST DT spot for upcoming FEATURE FRIDAY! Wohoo! The winner will be announced on Wednesday 29th.

Thanks for visiting and don't forget the BLOG HOP, and please visit us on Friday for Feature Friday!