A Butterfly Bookmark for Your Summer Reading

I love summer for a lot of reasons, but this particular summer has been great because my daughter is old enough to read by herself, which means I’m getting a lot more reading time for books I actually want to read (not that I don’t love reading to her, and I still do a lot, but grown-up books are nice, too).

We are always in need of more bookmarks, and crafty bookmarks are 1,000 times better than your grocery store receipt, right?

Here’s a great free butterfly bookmark cross-stitch pattern from Happy Stitches. She also has a version of the pattern in a square if you’d rather have a square of butterflies for some other reason.

Either way, it uses nine colors and is easy to customize with whatever colors you want your butterflies to be.

Happy stitching and reading!

[Photo: Happy Stitch.]

Looking for more Bookmark charts and cross-stitch patterns? Check these out on Etsy

Looking for more Butterfly themed cross stitch patterns and charts? Check out these butterflies we found on Etsy.

The cross stitcher behind the blog Sirious Stitches is quite into biscornu.

If you’re not, a quick primer: biscornu are three-dimensional cross-stitched objects with eight points, often with an indention in the middle that makes them look a bit like doughnuts without the hole. They can be just about any size and subject you can think of. They’re often used as pincushions but can also be seasonal decor or just decoration for any time of year.

I’ve got a collection of biscornu cross stitch patterns here.

Once you’ve stitched one or several (they are a little addicting) you might wonder what you can add to them to make them even more extra.

It very much depends on the design of your biscornu and the look you are going for, but Sirious Stitches has a great post all about some of the options you might consider.

I don’t want to give you the whole list because you need to go visit and see all of their great biscornu they’ve stitched, but one really easy thing that you can do with a lot of designs is take advantage of that center indent by adding a button, beads, silk flower or another embellishment.

This is great to do just with a basic button from your stash that coordinates with the design and colors of the cross stitching, but it’s extra fun if you have a button that’s on theme, such as a leaf for a fall biscornu or a flower shaped button for a floral design. Add a jingle bell to a Christmas pattern, or a charm if you don’t have a button that coordinates.

Just this one idea is sure to get you thinking about ways to embellish biscornu (not to mention other cross stitch projects) but head over to Sirious Stitches to see all of their ideas for embellishing biscornu to make these already fun projects even more fun.

Have you ever made biscornu? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

Have you read?