Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

Look, that's my name and website, that is.

Ooh, I am so very giddily excited to see my name and website address in print on a piece I wrote for the current Issue 22 of Yarn Forward, on sale from a couple of days ago (January 15th). It’s a two-page article on how to measure and make a pair of sock blockers to exactly work with the dimensions of your feet and give a professional finish to your sock knitting without having to spend a vast amount of money on pre-made ones in generic sizes.

A make-your-own sock blockers instructional for the wise and thrifty

I’m very happy with the way the article came out and how my pictures look in print, and hopefully the article carries over a little of the occasional humour and informativeness of the blog, prompting a wave of perfectly presented hand-knit socks all across the land…

I decided to make my own decoupage Christmas cards this year for various reasons including, but not limited to, the following:

1. I can’t get out to buy any
2. I thought it might be cheaper (or rather I wanted some quality for my money)
3. I thought that some folks might appreciate the thought
4. I am stuck in bed and a tad bored…

I’ve never really made greetings cards before, but it is exceedingly easy. Despite what QVC may want you to believe, you don’t need a whole room full of materials to make some rather nice cards.

Only 17 days to go, you know? Grab the glue stick!

These cards are made with a technique known as decoupage, which involves cutting and layering pieces of cardstock/heavy paper for a 3D effect.  It’s extremely easy to do and doesn’t require many materials, so I thought I would actually design a decoupage Christmas Card with a knitting(ish) theme to upload here for readers to download.  It feathers a cat wearing a santa hat, playing with a ball of wool:

Christmas card with a knitterly theme

All you need to make a decoupage christmas card is some plain white card, a printer, scissors, a glue stick and some sticky foam tabs (or silicon glue for 3D papercrafts if you happen to have any).  The process is simple:

Simply download the cat decoupage sheet at the end of this post and cut out shape 1.  This is the entire image of the cat, in his santa hat, with his ball of wool.  Next, cut out the four shapes next to the number ‘2′.  This is the cat’s head, two of his feet, and his ball of wool.  Place the foam tabs on the back of these four shapes and place them on top of the corresponding parts of the first image.  Now, some of your cat is only one layer high (such as the cats body and two back legs) whereas other parts of the image have been raised one step height.  Repeat this with steps 3 and 4 until you have a 3D image, waiting to be mounted on a card.

The decoupage sheet has enough shapes for two decoupage cats, and I have also included two separate downloadable sheets with backing paper designs on them in case anyone was in need of some backing papers.  One is a retro design and the other has the appearance of knitted fabric, to add to the fibre-crafts theme, but obviously these aren’t needed if you have your own patterned papers or some attractive gift-wrap.

Christmas decoupage sheet

retro backing paper and tags

knitted backing paper and tags

Click the image you wish to download to be taken to the free download space, but please bare in mind that these files are rather large so as to keep the image quality high, so they may take a moment to download.