Frosted Dew Drops ATCs

I started on the January theme at the end of last year to fill up my embroidery hoop alongside the Festive Greenery cards. This swap theme is Frosted Dew Drops and I had in mind the beautifully jewelled spider webs that are left from the autumn and get encrusted with frozen beads of water as it gets colder. I imagine no self respecting spider will be creating fantastic webs in the windy weather we've been having and, as it's snowed, it's probably too cold for them anyway (I'm not really up to speed with the schedule of spiders) but in the autumn - around October according to a previous spider web themed blog post I made - there are suddenly an amazing collection of webs that pop up in gardens overnight. Most of these will have blown away by the time January comes around but there are a few I have seen in the nooks and crannies of buildings or under benches, which survive and look like they are made of glass with the ice beads and frosted dew that cling to the silken strands. 

I wanted to try and represent the colours of an early morning, but with less grey so I have gone for a slightly blueish background with little hints of sparkle. The top fabric is a lovely spotted pale grey batik (my nod to the grey weather) which matches the silver sparkle in the striped fabric below. I haven't stitched anything onto the top fabric, but have gone over a few of the printed lines underneath just with long straight stitches following the pattern - more to help hold the fabric down than anything. The edge has been neatened with blanket stitch in a light grey to match the fabric above. 

The square batik below has been textured by adding back stitch in a single strand around all of the squares using the same colour thread, so that it blends into the background, and edged with bullion knots. And the slightly mottled blue fabric at the bottom also hasn't had anything added specifically to it, but has been edged with a really shiny ribbon that I had in my stash. It's quite a wide ribbon, with a band of metallic through the centre so it almost acts as another fabric layer. 

The ribbon is a variegated colour so I quite like that each card has a slightly different colouration to it. There is a more grey/yellow section which matches the top fabric and then more of a blue which complements the bottom fabric. 

My spiderweb has been created by initially couching two strands of a black/dark grey metallic embroidery floss with the long diagonal lengths. The thread was pulled through the fabric in four big stitches initially and then a single strand of normal black floss was used to discreetly couch these down and keep them in a straight line. I've stitched the perpendicular stitches around this frame, sort of wrapping the long stitches around the thread and fabric. They aren't measured out so each card is slightly different. 

With the limitations of the depth of the card for postage I couldn't add anything too thick to create my dew drops. I did initially think about french knots using a different colour metallic thread but I thought that would look too fussy. The beads I had in my stash were too small or not quite right so I ended up with these clear sequins. I have stitched them down so that they are tucked underneath the strands of the web to hide the stitches I've made to hold them down, but I'm wondering whether I should have searched harder for my clear thread so that I could stitch some on top of the web as well? Or if I should quickly cheat and use a dab of glue on top of some of them? I might play around with this idea as I can't stitch anything else on now that the backs are on but it's been playing on my mind - and I'm usually very anti-glue with my pieces!

These were probably the quickest Stitchsape cards I've made so far, but I hope they don't look them!! I was going for simple and effective with this theme.