"Hanging prominently" in her living room for the holidays is this lovely rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, which Tamra made with her Tajima Neo and Embroidery Library's Ornate 12 Days of Christmas Pack. She custom cut the mat board for each design, built the frame, and affixed little metal labels that she engraved to cite the lyrics for each "gift."

"I don't put glass over the embroidered designs I frame," she says, "It is more impressive when folks can touch the work and see that it is literally a painting in thread." Tamra selected some of her thread colors to coordinate with the colors of her room. She continues, "The flexibility of embroidery really appeals to me...it is so easy to make everything match!"

"Embroidering the pictures was the easiest part of this whole project," Tamra wrote. "The designs sew out perfectly with no intervention, freeing me up to cut mats and build frames."

Tamra does have a few more tools than the average embroiderer because of the work she does in custom laser cutting and engraving for scrapbookers and crafters in her home-based Internet business, theCardLadies.com.  But, she says, most trophy shops can make the little nameplates for you. Tamra considers this piece to be her "test" project, but as you can see, she passed this exam with flying colors!