THE MAKING OF - COUNTING THE DAYS ALPHA

As many of you know I love making digital products out of my real life craft projects! There's crochet and embroidered elements in many of my kits and I thought it might be fun to show you how I made the Counting The Days Alpha that is part of my 2013 Document Your December product line.

Before starting with the stitching I made a template with guidelines for my alpha. I chose a font, gave it an outline and clipped a fine diagonal stripe pattern to it and flipped it horizontally.

The reason I flipped the alpha horizontally is that I didn't want the guidelines to be visible under my stitching [apart from wanting to turn the alpha digital, where I could have erased those lines in photoshop, I also wanted to be able to use the letters for gift wrapping and such]. So I punched the holes in there on 'the wrong side' of the template, flipped the paper and started stitching.

When I finished all letters and numbers [quite a chore let me tell ya] I scanned them and made them digital.

Then I cut out each individual character, got rid of specks of dust, tweeked the colors, gave them a shaped cut out and voila instant handmade gorgeousness to add a bit of texture to those digital pages!

Here's a layout I made with the alpha showing that you it's not great just for December pages

credits: what I like about you, more than words elements & papers, word up, counting the days alpha, dinner date elements, kitschy kit, passion for papers: quirky stitched white, lub dub papers