Vintage Button Swap

Sometime in May, I took part in a Vintage button swap organized by Tarryn of Butter and Buntings.  I am a recent follower of Tarryn and I became hooked because she has the best vintage finds. She'll be opening an Etsy shop soon so I will definitely be watching out for it. 

The package from my swap partner, Mayra, arrived last week and it came all the way from Australia.  

Unfortunately, Mayra is not a blogger so I cannot link back to her, but I already thanked her for all the lovely things she sent me. Here's what's inside the box...

Lots of awesome vintage buttons

Paper cranes and origami paper

Super cool vintage mug

What a treat!

I'm hoping that Tarryn will host another vintage swap so I can participate again. 

Have a great day!

Fabric Swap

I recently joined the fabric swap hosted by Carla over at "My 1/2 Dozen Daily" and received this sweetly wrapped package from Joanna at "That Thing I Made". 

I love how Joanna decorated the packaging with cute little stamps. 

Inside the package was this gorgeous box filled will all kinds of fabric scraps and cute ribbons. 

 Joanna even sent me a handmade heat wrap which my hubby already put to use. 

Thank you so much Joanna for the lovely things you sent me, and thank you to Carla for hosting the swap. 

Till next time.

Secret Sister Revealed

I came home to find this package in the mailbox waiting for me. I knew it was for the secret sister swap so I was really excited because I wanted to find out who I was paired up with. 

I can now reveal that my Secret Sister is Susan from "The Food Allergy Chronicles". Please check out her awesome blog as she has some really good recipes to share. 

Susan was so thoughtful that she read over the Craftmates' blog to find out a little more about me. She focused on my love for anything vintage, sewing, and of course...chocolates!!!

Now on to the contents of the package.... Susan sent me some homemade chocolate crinkles, a very cute 70's mug, homemade hot cocoa packets and vanilla, a pin cushion that she made, and some awesome materials to make a purse (including a pattern). 

For the chocolate crinkles, Susan used Mum's original organic cocoa powder - a "superfood", and the sugar that she used was organic cane sugar. Let me tell that you that the cookies were gone the same day I received them. I am embarrassed to say that I did not share and ate them all by myself...they were really yummy!

Here's a photo of all the awesome things that were inside the box.

So, thank you Susan for the lovely package you put together for me. Thanks also to Carla at My 1/2 Dozen Daily for hosting the secret sister swap. 

Have a great day!

Secret Sisters Swap

As I mentioned in a previous post, the very first swap I joined was the Secret Sisters Swap hosted by Carla of  My 1/2 Dozen Daily. 

For those interested and curious, Secret Sisters is like the holiday tradition, Secret Santa or Kris Kringle.  Once you join, you will be randomly assigned a swap partner  to whom you will anonymously send a gift. You will be given information about your "secret sister" based on the questionnaires you have to fill out when you sign up to join.    

This is the second time I'm joining and I already received the name of my swap partner. I have to send out my gift by November 4 so I already started putting my package together. I almost missed the deadline because I forgot to sign up and e-mail Carla. Thanks to Cindy from "Just North of Whiarton & South of the Checkerboard" for reminding me : ) 

Speaking of Carla, she is currently having a fabulous giveaway so hop on over to her blog for a chance to win.  

Till next time!

  

Addicted to Swaps

Since joining swap-bot in July of this year, I have participated in numerous swaps - postcards, papers, fabrics, ATCs, handmade crafts, and many other things. I am totally hooked and have to stop myself from signing up on a lot of these swaps. I try to limit myself to one swap a week so as not to overextend myself. 

Before swap-bot, the very first swap I participated in was the Secret Sisters hosted by Carla of "1/2 Dozen Daily". Carla is doing another Secret Sisters so please hop on over to her blog if you would like to join. 

Here are a couple of projects I recently completed for some swaps.

 This is for a "Bird theme Christmas ornament" swap. I used this tutorial from Zakka Life. 

This one is for an ATC swap and I used a paisley rubber stamp and did some embossing. I really liked the way it turned out. 

Okay, I'm off to do some more ATC's that will be due next week so bye for now.

Enjoy and have a great day!!!

ATC

In a recent post, I mentioned that I have been joining some ATC swaps over at swap-bot. 

Here are some of the new ATC's that I have created: 

 This one is for an owl-themed swap. My swap partner's favourite color is purple so I used two shades of purple for this ATC. 

Sorry for the blurry photo

These two are for a profile based swap that I am doing with someone from Denmark. My swap partner's favourite city is London, hence the "I love London" ATC. She also loves woodland theme so I decided to make a mushroom card. 

For the London ATC, I used my recently purchased Dymo label maker - I just love its retro style. For the mushroom one, I used modge podge to glue and seal the paper cut-outs. 

Since joining swap-bot, I have really enjoyed making ATCs. They are fun, quick to make, and satisfies my urge to create. The only downside is that my craft area is such a mess.

Till next time!

Quick and Easy Project

I recently signed up for a coin purse swap over at Swap-bot and made this super easy coin purse. 

The first step was picking the main fabric and lining from my stash of fat quarters. This was hardest part for me because I couldn't decide what fabrics to use. I finally chose this yellow, pink, and green combo for the main fabric and polka dots for the lining. 

I love polka dots!

I then cut the fabric pieces - one for the main fabric, one for the lining, and the interfacing. Since the fabric that I chose was made of a lightweight cotton material, I used fusible interfacing to make it sturdier.

The next step was to iron the interfacing to the wrong side of the main fabric. With the right sides together, I sewed the main fabric and lining, leaving an opening at the bottom for turning. I also placed the tag on the side before sewing.

Don't forget to leave an opening at the bottom for turning

 After sewing the two fabrics together, I clipped some notches along the curves so that the seams will lie flat and trimmed the bottom corners diagonally.

Then it was time to turn the coin purse inside out through the small opening at the bottom. After that, I ironed the whole thing and with the main fabric facing up, sewed the opening. 

To form the coin purse, I folded the bottom up with the lining inside and top stitched all the way around. 

 The last step was to put the plastic snaps on. 

This project took me about half an hour to make. Well....maybe 45 minutes because I had to take pictures in between. 

I hope the person receiving this coin purse will like the colours I chose. 

Happy Sewing!

Swap-bot

Well, my plan to do some sewing this weekend did not really happen. Instead, I just took it easy and had a relaxing time at the beach. The break provided a welcome relief from the stressful week I had at work.  

Flip flops in the sand

I now feel more rejuvenated and ready to start more projects. I have quite a few lined up since I recently joined Swap-Bot and started swapping. 

Swap-Bot is an online community that facilitates group snail mail and internet swaps. You can read all about it here. 

My most recent swap was with someone from Taiwan who sent me some fabulous fabrics. In return, I swapped this tote bag I sewed  and a zippered pouch using the same fabric as the bag. From the response I got, it appears that we were both happy with what we each received. 

My favourite is the Little Red Riding hood fabric

More lovely fabrics

Before joining Swap-bot, I've never heard of ATC's. I actually had to google it to find out more about it. According to Wikipedia, Artist Trading Cards (or ATC's) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern baseball cards. 

Last week, I mustered enough courage to sign up for an ATC swap. The theme is paperdolls and here is what I came up with. 

For the background, I used different kinds of washi tapes to make it colourful and vibrant. I also used fabric on the doll's skirt and pop dots to attach the doll to the card and give it more dimension.  Finally, I added a brad with a flower on it to add a bit of whimsy. 

I need to take lessons from my fellow craftmate, Irma, as I still have a lot to learn when it comes to paper crafts which is her forte. 

I just hope that the person receiving my ATC will appreciate  the effort I put into it. 

Thanks for stopping by!