Once Upon a Time...

We are wrapping up our ornament series this week with the quintessential beginning phrase common to most fairy tales: "Once upon a time." As we were putting this series of ornaments together, we didn't feel that it would be complete without including these famous words in the form of an ornament. So we promised four ornaments in this series, but here is a bonus! (We told you there might be a surprise...)

I (Kara) had recently seen a method of transferring an image to a background using Glad® Press'n Seal wrap. Since I wanted to embroider the letters in a particular font (Apple Chancery), I thought this method might be perfect.

My Uni-ball Signo white pen was perfect for this since I would be working on a black background.

I laid a piece of Press 'n Seal over the pattern . . .

. . . and traced the letters using my white pen.

Once I had finished tracing the letters, I centered the press and seal over my black circle. I trimmed the excess plastic wrap so it wouldn't get in my way while embroidering.

And now for the fun part! I chose to do small chain stitches for the fatter parts of the letters and straight stitches for the thinner. I started with the "O" and did chain stitches all the way around it, and then I came back with another row of chain stitches for the fat parts. I used a stem stitch for the vine and french knots for the flowers.

For the embroidery, I used a Valdani 12 perle cotton for the green vine and Painters Threads 12 perle cotton for the letters and flowers. The not-so-fun part was pulling the press and seal off after the embroidery was finished. Pulling it off needs to be done carefully, so as not to disturb the embroidery. It was a bit tedious, but a pair of fine-tip tweezers were the key to getting the little bits out.

Once the embroidery was finished, I put a piece of Timtex between the two circles with a glue stick dab to hold the parts together and then proceeded to secure them with the knotted blanket stitch, with beads in between the knots.

For your free pattern for this week's ornament, please click here: Once Upon a Time Ornament. If you missed any of the free patterns you can find them here:

UPDATE: Thank you for stopping by here! A detailed pattern will be available at a future date at www.needleseyestories.com

Cinderella's Slipper

Little Red Riding Hood

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White's Dwarf

We hope you have enjoyed this ornament series as much as we have enjoyed creating it! If you have made any of our ornaments we'd love to see them.  Feel free to post them to our Facebook page or to our Google + page.