Faux Fox

Everything went wrong with this card! But I'm still sharing it because of the idea and because of all the time and swearing that went into the making of it. 

It's for the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers "X is for fauX" challenge. I know I've already played once, but this is the card that was in the back of my mind all along, it's just taken so many attempts I didn't know whether it was actually going to become reality. 

Many, many years ago I was a compulsive cross stitcher, until I discovered rubberstamping. That sounds like the old Smirnoff ads, doesn't it? "She used to be a cross stitcher, until she discovered Smirnoff...." (for those who don't know, Smirnoff is a brand of vodka and the kind of ads they had in the 1970s would be banned now). Anyway, stamping is probably as addictive as vodka, but no stamps were inked in the making of this card. 

Which is a very long way of saying I have, for about 30 years, had an NBUS sheet of 14 count cross-stitch paper so I decided to use it with fineliners do do some faux cross stitch. What I didn't realise is how much smaller and closer together the holes have got over the last 30 years - nothing to do with my eyesight of course - and the number of attempts it took me to follow the blooming chart and produce the fox and lettering was so crazy that in the end they all ended up being done on separate scraps because I'd wasted so much of the paper there wasn't space to do it sampler-style as I'd originally intended. 

So all these bits needed a background, and while I was still thinking of faux things, what about using an embossing folder for some faux knitting? The buttons, however, are real.