Cards with Crochet

My love affair with craft began when I was seven or eight years old when my mother introduced me to cross stitch. She taught me the basics and then gave me a pattern book as back then there weren't any stitch kits. I spent hours embroidering little birds and flowers, fruits and designs. Then my mother taught me how to knit, that again became a passion. Later my interests evolved to artwork and painting and now it is paper craft. Through it all, crochet was the only thing I hadn't tried. I was always interested but never attempted it. So when I saw the new range of crochet yarns at Itsy Bitsy, I knew the time for crochet had come. 

I picked up 2 balls of yarn from Itsy Bitsy -  a shaded pink and an olive green. I also picked up some hooks - Itsy Bitsy has a range of crochet hooks with different sizes, I picked the thinnest one as I figured with yarn so thin, the needle had to be thin too. Then I headed over to YouTube. I cannot tell you how many tutorials there are online for different types of crochet projects. There are tutorials on the basics, on patterns, on shawls, scarves, jackets, shrugs, flowers, leaves - my goodness, the list is endless. After watching and practicing, I started getting the hang of crochet. Then I started making the flowers, following that the leaves and in 3 days, my set of crochet flowers were done. Now it was time to put them to use. And being the paper crafting I am, of course it had to be cards. 

Here's a look at the cards I made using my hand made crochet flowers and leaves. I had also just picked up the DCWV French Country Stack which went perfectly with this colour scheme. Since I had made 3 flowers, I decided to make 3 cards and for the first time, I found I was able to put them together fairly quickly. I guess the crochet flowers had inspired me!

For my first card, I used white card stock as the base layer and placed a sheet from the French Country stack on top. I added a final layer of white card stock which I had embossed with a lovely Itsy Bitsy embossing folder. I distressed both these layers using the We R Memory Keepers Sweetheart distressing tool. My crochet flowers and leaves went on one corner and a lovely bow on the opposite one. I finished the card with an adorable Blue Moon scissor charm on my ribbon. Love it to bits!!

My next card had more layers of pattern paper from the French Country Stack. The crocheted rose with accompanying leaves formed the center piece, I gotta say, this flower is my favourite one. I embossed the top layer of white card stock with the Sweet Flowers Embossing folder and added some pretty pink and white roses on the two corners for a really pretty finish. Some randomly placed pearls added to the floral feel and voila, my card was done. 

For my next card, I tried a completely different layout. I used the pattern paper as the base, gluing two pieces back to back. This made it heavy enough to serve as a card base. I filed one of the new rectangular doilies at Itsy Bitsy in half to create a lacy top layer and added a border of pearls on it. My crochet flower went on the centre and the rest of the empty space was filled with die cuts from the Couture Creations Intricutz Die. This card started out looking quite sad but finished up looking the best I think. 

Here are some closeups of the first two cards, to give you a look at the embossing and the detailing in the crochet flowers. I really got quite addicted to the crocheting aspect, found myself at it till 4 am every night. Now that my project is ready I hope I still continue to crochet. 

How do you like my first attempt at crochet? Do you like how I used them in cards? Have you tried crochet yourself? Leave a comment and let me know! Would love to hear all about it. 

Supplies Used