I love the look of machine stitching on layouts but am too timid to try. How do I start and is there anything I need to know fir

Hi there

First of all get hold hold of your sewing machine and a few pieces of scrap cardstock and practice on those until you are confident enough to work on the real thing.

Second and this is VERY important - make sure that you set quite a long stitch length, a tiny stitch will just leave you with torn cardstock.

Finally use an old needle - paper and card will blunt a new one, and don't forget to swap it for a new one when you want to stitch fabric again.

You can get a lovely effect on your pages just letting the unthreaded needle punch a neat line of holes, and of course you get different textures doing this depending on whether you stitch the page face up or face down, if you stitch on the back of your page  you will get raised holes on the front.

There are some wonderful machine embroidery threads available which will give you some fabulous effects.

Have a go at adding stitching to your pages and don't forget to upload them to the gallery to show us whow you got on!