embroidering on paper with sew easy

Rarely do I walk through the scrapbooking sections at stores. Sometimes I think that I should get into this craft, but it's never really gelled for me, so I let it be. Nevertheless, the other day I found myself in the scrapbooking aisle at Target and I found something I needed. $18 felt like a lot for what seemed like a toy, but really...I needed it.

The idea behind Sew Easy is that you can add embroidered details to your paper crafting without the hassle of hand piercing the paper first. If you've stitched on paper before, you know that it takes some patience and precision. Sew Easy skips all that! Included in this starter kit is a foam mat, the piercing tool, a total of 4 piercers, plus embroidery floss and a needle. I think I was most excited about not needing to think about evenly spaced stitches!



But here's the thing.

I opened the package, and was disappointed to find that the piercing rollers are made of plastic. The points are very sharp, but plastic? How well would this work? So, thinking that embroidered cards are exactly what I was wanting, I grabbed some card stock to try this out.





I rolled gently and it barely punched the holes. I rolled firmly and it punched the holes and bent the card stock. I grabbed copy paper and it crunched that even worse! The yellow and pink rollers weren't too bad, but the others were frustrating. NOT what I was hoping for. And I started thinking that this would be going back. But I REALLY wanted this to work for me!

Very cleverly, I considered that since this is made for scrapbooking, maybe it would work on paper designed for that purpose...




Well, what do you know? Sew Easy rolls along and perfectly punches scrapbook paper like a dream! I probably should have guessed that from the start, but that just wasn't where my mind went. So the question remains...will I use this enough just on specialty papers? Perhaps. Of course, now that I've found all the rest of the piercing designs that are available, I'm even more drawn to it. The thing is, take a look:




The stitching comes out fantastic. Like, we should all have something like this for our regular embroidery. But this is about "the thing". The thing is...I'm pretty sure that I don't do paper crafts like this for a reason. Look at that terrible card! Embarrassing. Ugh.

Of course, maybe if I'm adding stitching to my projects, I'll have a reason to practice more and I'll create something that actually looks like something. Maybe.

The final word: If you like stitching and working with paper on a regular basis, this would be a helpful tool for you. But if you mix these crafts only on occasion, save the money and pierce your paper the old fashioned way.