Conquering the Machine

I am happy to report that I got beyond the stupidity with the embroidery machine and put it to good use on some very belated high school graduation gifts. Two of Hubby's cousins sent us graduation announcements a few months ago for their daughters and I've been putting off their gifts because I just couldn't decide what to do for them. Due to the economy and my lack of income, we've been trying to keep expenses down so I've been searching for something nice, functional and inexpensive.

Then arrives the embroidery machine on my doorstep {thanks again, Mom} and I knew I had to do something cool and personalized. But what?

After investing in a small rainbow of thread for it ...

I went on the hunt and came up with these nice black leather-bound photo albums. They hold 200 4"x6" pictures and have a square cut out in the front cover to hold a photo -- or whatever you want to feature. I had some black fabric in the craft room from when I made Hubby a laptop case years ago. I figured with the black album, the black fabric would blend in nicely and I could jazz it up with colorful embroidery.

One of the girls is Emily Rose so ...

Unfortunately, the rose design was so large, I ended up cutting the leaf and stem off, but I really just wanted to make sure you could see the bloom through the window anyway. Then I embroidered her first name above the flower, cut it to fit and voilà.

On to the next gift ...

I've always been a big fan of anything personalized and I really like the way these turned out. The albums were only $6.99 each at Hobby Lobby so I'll probably end up spending more on the shipping to get them there than I did on the actual albums.

I'm very happy with this gift idea which would be great for any occasion ... birthday, anniversary, wedding, shower, new baby, new home ... and they come in other colors.

Doing the happy dance because I'm pretty jazzed with my success on the embroidery machine. Take that, little brother!