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I can’t believe it is already September! The summer seemed to fly by and in a couple of weeks, Sienna begins school! It’s just nursery school for 3 hours a day but this will be the first time she is away from me for so long. This is just the beginning. Before I know it, she will be in real school all day!! I can’t even imagine. At any rate, this post isn’t about Sienna! Here are some of the swaps I sent during the summer!

A shaker postcard swap. My partner likes lighthouses so I dug through my archives and found this photo I took when Yves and I went to Washington State right before Sienna was born.

An owl stuffie from the Stitch Fall 09 magazine. I’ve already made the raccoon and the chipmunk is the last one in the trio!

The owl stuffie was part of the Woodland Profile swap. I made my partner an owl pouch, woodland creatures glass magnets, hedgehog keychain, and a mushroom keychain.

I’ve been experimenting with some glitter and rub ons (print my own rub ons that I got for my birthday from Yves). I made the top one into a keychain for a keychain swap and the bottom one is a pendant for a WTA in one of the groups I’m in.

Bird pc for a mail art group

I joined a swap to make Red flowers from this pattern. I had so much fun making them that I joined the swap to make orange ones. I almost did not want to send the orange ones away. (Unfortunately I’m still waiting for the orange swap from my partner and it’s past the due date. argh!)

We had 3 partners for a handmade earring swap. The above 2 sets were for someone I knew personally!

These 2 sets were for the host of the swap, who likes flying pigs (I had her for a partner before!)

It was hard to make this last set for the last partner because she really didn’t indicate her likes in her profile. Still waiting to hear if she likes these!

This was for a Sublime Stitching embroidery swap. I had bought these Aunt Martha paint pens thinking I could use them to color in the patterns (I see such beautiful coloring by so many people!) They didn’t turn out the way I thought (it’s supposed to be used for outlining, why would you want to do that?!) Anyway, I figured out how to use them, which I’ll show in another post. Here I used my gocco fabric paint for the brown and used the glitter paint from the same Aunt Martha order.

These notecards were for the Hand Carved Stamp group. I just finished reading Water for Elephants and was inspired to do a circus theme. I carved the circus tent, CIRCUS, elephant and ringmaster. I even had some clown scrapbook paper!

And finally, for the woodlands wearable swap (I’m finally happy with the photos) ! I made my partner a bunny pendant necklace and a bird bracelet. I’ve gotten a lot of uses out of the woodland graphics I got from Etsy seller Plan F Studios and the bird is from Piddix.

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I know I say this all the time but I really need to be a lot better documenting the swaps I receive from people. I got a couple of really good ones lately. I was really wowed by this swap from Pandessa for the Make me Something/Anything swap. Having done felt food, I know how much work goes into making it. Check it out!! A whole bento box full of sushi!

(a little blurry because I was trying to be quick! See those snatchy fingers in the top left corner?)

Sienna loves playing with it and now has her own when we get sushi!

And as if the felt sushi wasn’t enough, she included this cup cozy she crochet!

These earrings came as a complete surprise for me! Mamacrafter, the partner I sent the A-Z Creative swap to loved the package I sent to her so much that she bought these from my Etsy Favorites! How sweet is that?? The earrings are from Heather Boyd.

Here’s one I did a couple of months back for the Handmade Summer Dishtowel swap. My partner likes things showing where you are from so I used the taxi cab fabric from the City Quilter and printed out one of my holga shots of a street sign onto printable fabric and sewed it on.

Here is one of the items I made for the A-Z Creative swap I mentioned above. My partner had something similiar to this on her Etsy favs so I made her one! The artwork is from TTGart.

I had lots of fun stitching this one up! It’s a free pattern from Aimee Ray (I can’t wait for her new book to come out!) This was for the Make Me Anything profile swap as I mentioned above. My partner loves unicorns/pegasus so I made this pillow using one of Yves’ almost made it to goodwill linen shirts. Her hair and tail are made up of 3 different strands of floss with one being a metallic. Unfortunately, the photos don’t really show the sheen of the metallic, which is too bad because it looks really cool!

This next one is for the Woodland Handmade swap. This pattern is from Fall 2009 Stitch magazine (I made the cat pillow from this magazine too!) The tail called for needle felting and I finally pulled out my kit that I bought earlier this year and never tried. Well, I need a lot more practice as it came out pathetic (my partner rated me a 5 with a heart anyway!)

This one is not for a swap. My friend Barbara from Seattle put a call out for some penguin stamps so I carved one for her.

And speaking of carving, I made this for a Winner Takes All game on one of the group forums on swap-bot. It was for profile surprises and my partner (Pandessa) likes pentagrams.

These are the Altered Domino Magnets I made for the swap of the same name.

And 2 holidays in August for the Wacky Holidays swap! A crocheted potholder for Happy Watermelon day and a pendant for Happy Daughter’s day (her daughter likes Nightmare before Christmas and black and pink!)

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I joined a Minion swap that was sponsored by Universal Pictures to promote the release of their latest film, Despicable Me (came out Friday, the 9th). They sent out a blow up minion to all the participants and all you had to do was take it around and take photos of it (like the Flat Stanley project and a similar Where in the World is Crusher swap I did). I was surprised at the nice quality of the minion and that it was weighted. We named ours Larry. First we did some shopping. Sienna was nice enough to lend Larry one of her hats.

Then it was time for lunch!

Now every time Sienna sees a commercial or an ad for the movie, she gets all excited and says Look! Larry! ha!

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Continuing on the earring kick, I joined an earring swap and made these for 2 partners (preface to say I am not totally happy with the photos! They didn’t really capture the essence and I have to work on that):

One partner got the green pair and the other red. I also made these for them:

And of course here are a couple for myself (although I did make myself a pair of the above copper hearts too!)

And guess what I made? Something I’ve been wanting to make for awhile…

I painted a couple of wooden frames with a new kit I got that is eco friendly called Earth Safe Finishes and I used Mod Podge to secure some fabric and my dad gave me some screen door mesh for this…

And do you know what it is?

Woohoo!! The top one is 8×10 and the bottom one is 5×7. There wasn’t really any rhyme or reason to how I laid out the earrings and am happy to have room to add more. I’m so glad that I am now able to see most of my earrings (my post earrings and ear wires are still in the jewelry box.)

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I am participating in Christy Nelson’s craft challenge for June. They are turning out to be quite fun and not as stressful as I thought it would be. For this month, I am also hosting a swap for the challenge where we mail out our completed projects to our partner. A chance to win a prize AND get someone else’s wonderful creation! True to form, when the packet came, I thought to myself, “Oh boy! What am I going to do with this stuff?” I was a little concerned because the packet included some clay. With all the crafts I dabble in, I don’t do clay (besides precious metal clay) so I am not very familiar with working with it.

I thought I took a photo of all the supplies but I can’t find the image! Argh! I know I said that about last month’s challenge and couldn’t find the image. Well, I found it while looking for this month’s image. I guess I’ll find it during the August challenge (there is a month break for the challenge so no July challenge). Anyhow, Jennifer aka hippofairy has posted an image on her blog so here is a link. The only difference is I got white clay and my glitter paper were blue and green. So we got some clay, a pill bottle, raffia, glitter paper and a favor cup. Really, what was I going to do it this???

I did not take step by step photos of my project. I really have to get better with that. I promise to do that for August. Anyhow, I somehow came up with an idea way before deadline. Truly shocking! And I was really happy with the idea so went with it. And I got to pull out my dremel! I love my dremel and I don’t use it in my crafts as much as I thought I would. I used it to drill a hole on top of the bottle and a little window on the side.

I applied some gesso to the pill bottle, painted it blue and used the raffia as a cord to hang (if my partner wants to). I flattened out the favor cup and painted it a bright yellow. I used my sizzix to cut out a scallop shape and the letters E A T. I worked the clay into something that resembles a bird (it may not be the best bird but I’m happy that it somewhat looks like one!) baked it and painted it. Put it all together and this is what we have:

A miniature bird feeder complete with sun roof! HA! The “seeds” are little shake on beads made by Tulip that I got ages ago at 75 percent off. It finally came into use! I really think it is so cute! I hope my partner likes it!

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I totally forgot to post about what I made for Craft Challenge May. I didn’t take a photo of all the “ingredients” but they consisted of styrofoam beads, small round mirrors, wreath and floral wire. I didn’t win and rightly so. I literally made my challenge item the night before. But I actually like what I made anyway. Every time the packet comes and I see what we get, I always say to myself “Oh, boy! What am I going to make with this?” So I am always so happy that I actually think of something! Here is what I made:

And here are some things I made for swaps! I joined a faux stained glass swap because I already had the fake leading and little containers of stained glass paint that I got from a kit someone bought me for my birthday ages ago. I was excited to play around with them again and it was so much fun to do! My partner loves coffee and voodoo dolls so I made her two. The photos suck and do not really show how cool it looks in the light. I ended up also using Alcohol Inks to make colors I didn’t have in the paint. FUN!

(the hearts are for me)

The butterfly and Eiffel Tower didn’t actually make it into a swap as I was just doing more playing around with the UV lamp and UV resin.

This Raccoon bookmark (resin) was part of the Woodland Lucky Parcel

Hand carved stamp swap

These last 2 were for the Handmade Specialty swap.

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We fly home from vacation tomorrow so I hope to be able to post some vacation shots soon!

Some more swaps, fiber related. I decided to use this Coffeeshop burn action for these set of photos (coffeeshop is a GREAT blog for photoshop tutorials and free stuff!). I must have snapped over a dozen shots of the chicken stuffie I made and was not really happy with the results for some reason. I used this vignetting action and it makes it look better so I decided to use it on the rest of the photos.

Chicken for the Spring on the Farm swap, made with the Chickummyjig Pattern

Yep! Made another drawstring, french seamed bag! I’m telling ya, so easy!! For the Woodland Lucky Parcel swap

Eiffel tower stuffie for the Embroidered Stuffie swap. I used a pattern from the Rainbow of Stitches book and widened it. The grey fabric is cut from a linen shirt the Yves didn’t want anymore. Really loved how it came out!

This is actually a Wild Olive embroidery pattern (I believe it is the March embroidery pattern download in the sidebar) that I made a felt pin from instead. For a mystery pouch swap.

2nd time making this owl bookmark but instead of embroidering flowers, I used dimensional fabric paint to paint in my partner’s initials. Part of the Woodland lucky parcel swap.

Used a Sizzix die to make this heart brooch and embroidered my partner’s wedding date on it. Part of the Wacky, Unusual Holiday-June swap. This one was for National Pink Day!

This is actually the Mushroom from Mario Bros. but I made the stem longer so it wouldn’t look like it. The pattern is here. This was part of the mystery pouch tag.

Lion Brand doughnut pattern for National Doughnut Day! I used dimensional fabric paint for the sprinkles.

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The craft of the moment is earrings and pendants. It’s been awhile since I made loops with jewelry tools. I need more practice. It was so much fun to make! These are for ME to wear!

I had a lot of fun stamping on resin beads during the February thing a day and learned that if I don’t coat it, it will fade. I used Diamond Glaze to coat these. It’s looking a little dull after a few wears although I could probably buff it but will try other options next time. And my loops look really bad but they are just for me so I don’t mind.

I just made these over the weekend and wore them for the first time yesterday. I lost one of the silver chains and tree at the end of the day (or maybe I lost it in the beginning of the day!). I was so bummed! I think I may have to dab a little glue on all the jump rings next time.

This was for a mystery pouch tag on swap-bot. I crochet the orange flowers.

Finally getting around to experimenting with UV resins, this one is Lisa Pavelka’s Magic Glos. Still need to play around with it some more.

Phoenix turned 4 on the 15th and I made her this necklace using the acrylic fragments from Tim Holtz and collage sheets I bought on Etsy.

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Some more swaps I’ve done, stitching related.

Postcard cozy for March is craft month

I made these bird pins from an embroidery pattern. I made the top one first (for a Spring lucky parcel) and liked how it turned out so much that I made another one for a bird lover (technically not a swap but there was a call out to cheer up a fellow swapper that found out she has cancer.)

an owl bookmark, also for the spring lucky parcel. Pattern here.

a drawstring bag for the spring lucky parcel (I discovered how to do french seams and it’s now my go to for making bags as you don’t need a lining)

Zombie Embroidery for a rainbow lucky parcel

Cupcake pin for the rainbow lucky parcel

There’s that french seam drawstring bag again! For the rainbow lucky parcel. Flat and filled.

Matryoshka dolls for the swap of the same name. Pattern here.

Blue bunny for the Woodland stuffie swap. Pattern for this here.

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Here are some recent carvings I’ve done in swaps. I’m attempting to group all like type crafts together regardless of the swaps but I don’t know how long I can keep that up. All my photos are kept chronologically and I take too many to tag them all although it might benefit me to start doing that right after I download them into the computer…Anyway, I digress!

Part of March is Craft month swap.

Hedgehog carving for the Secret Sisters Spring parcel.

Fleur de Lys carving, part of a pinata swap (make a pinata and fill with goodies)

The ‘orange’ for the Rainbow Lucky Parcel’s swap. SC is my partner’s initials.

These 2 were for a mystery pouch swap. The recipient’s nickname is Roro and gummybear.

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