For Mason

First of all I better warn you this could be a long post with quite a few pics so bear with me. My card for Mason has a TeddyBo giraffe on since my niece is mad about zoo animals especially giraffes. I had with a pink hat waiting just in case.
The clouds and gingham paper were already in my stash and I used the Memory Box clouds die but I ran them through with the Swiss Dots embossing folder.
Of course the oval is Floral Ovals from Spellbinders and my trellis is from MFT die which I cut out twice but I also took a craft knife to Kraft one to take out the trellis and then fit it over the white one. Little white flowers is a tiny flower punch with some blue gems to finish.

The secret project a Cross-stitch Afghan, my Sister wanted to make the sampler with Mason's name and she convinced me I needed to make a Afghan. I've always wanted a go but I like working in a smaller count and wasn't sure how to work out size for the pattern for each square.
So when I found the Stoney Brook pattern for Afghan that had zoo animals well I had to didn't I.
My problem if you follow my blog reguarly you would have already read my problem the time scale. There was 13 squares and each one took me two weeks to complete and thats if I had a good week. It also took over 2 weeks to do the fringing stitch in every hole all the way round.
I think officially I had about 20 weeks to complete.
I also didn't like the finish using two strands you could see the white underneath so I used three strands my poor Hubby was always having to take me a shop to buy more cotton or I was ringing my Sister to pop to her local shop.

 2 Elephants

2 Giraffes

4 Palm Trees and 2 Lions

1 Monkey

2 Rhinos

I also had another problem I didn't like the multi coloured Zebra, to me a Zebra is black and white, so he wasn't used but I needed to use something else so I moved the giraffe down and had to scan the Rhino so I could turn him to look the other way. Of course when you printed it out the symbols were facing the wrong way.
I was so relieved when the fringe came to stop at my fringing stitching was a bit worried there, I also personalised it with Mason's name. In the Cross-stitch booklet there was matching sampler too which my Sister completed.

Here's me with my Great Nephew bear in mind this is the only time I will admit to being a Great Aunty.