Challenge yourself!

I have been taking a break from swapping and challenges these past months, trying to focus more on my thesis, but these two were just too good to resist!


I have joined iHanna's second annual DIY Postcard Swap. The object is simple: make 10 different handmade postcards (any style or technique) and mail them off to 10 swappers from all over the world! The send-outs are fast approaching, so I have been working away on my cards.


I decided to use the same image on all my cards, but vary the collage elements and colors. The girl comes from an old journal page, which I scanned, traced and cleaned up in Photoshop, and printed. I used acrylics, book pages and all sorts of papers for the cards, and then sealed them with mod podge.


Some of them are still waiting for the finishing touches, and then I just need to add sturdy backs and send them off to their new homes!

I also joined the recent 30 days of Lists challenge, organized by Kam, Amy and Justine. Since I am an avid list maker, I had a lot of fun with this challenge. I'm planning on using my lists in upcoming art journal pages.

(Click image for a larger view)

Handmade Journal

I'm excited to show you some of the things I made for a recent Craftster swap. I tried this tutorial for hand-bound journals about a year ago, but then I forgot about it... Just rediscovered it for this swap, and it's so much fun!

I embroidered my partners initial on the cover fabric to personalize the journal. I used nice white paper for the signatures and a sparkly blue scrapbook paper for the end papers.

Since my partner likes to sew, I stamped some of the pages with a handmade button stamp.

I'm excited to try binding journals again, and I'm thinking about making a couple more journals as Christmas gifts. I think it would be fun to personalize them with different colors, applique and embroidery. I recently started planning out my hand made Christmas gifts, hoping to get some more done in advance and not have the usual last-minute scramble. Do you have any fun gift ideas?

Recently received

I've been lucky enough to receive some really lovely things in recent swaps, so I thought I'd make you jealous! :-)

This first item is a beautifully made fabric bowl, made by Kwality570 on Craftster. Isn't it amazing? I gave it to my mom, and when I visited her last week we tried to make a couple of fabric bowls ourselves. They turned out NOTHING like this, I can tell you! :-)

Next up are two neat homemade soaps, and 3 great custom magnets (do you recognize Stella?), both received in the Craftster Sweat Shoppe Swap. The soaps smell great and I gave the magnets to Stella's parents who liked them a lot.

And last but not least, these lovely ATCs made by Jody, received in a private swap at Swap-bot. I love these pretty vintage ladies!

Small packages

Not that I don't like doing large swaps and crafting bigger things, but there is something special about small packages and tiny things... I've been doing many small swaps over the past weeks, and it's so much fun to pack up the little gifts and send them off - not to mention the fun of receiving tiny treasures!

This is a fabric covered matchbox I made for a swap-bot swap, it's filled with buttons, charms, ribbon as well as a few handmade things; a magnet and some button thumb tacks. It's amazing how much you can fit into a tiny matchbox!

This second pic shows the lovely package I received for another Swap-bot swap, the Button Swap #2. A great mix of new and vintage buttons, all in my favorite colors! My button stash is growing all the time, I'd better start making some more button-themed projects! Any ideas? :-)

Two busy weeks

I haven't been a very good blogger this past month! There has been a lot going on, so here's a short update of what I've been up to:

- I've been working, job hunting, and trying to sort out our budget for the coming months... Boring but necessary! I know I'm not the only one worrying about money these days, what with the awful financial situation... I do hope you all haven't been to badly affected!

- I've finished up some swaps at Craftster, and received some great items. Check out this cute notebook holder I received in the Small De-stash Swap!

I love the little felt owl, and since I am obsessed with "to do"-lists, I know it will be useful! Trying to use up some of the felt in my own stash, I made a needle book for my partner in another swap.

It's got 4 pages and a small pocket on the inside:

- I've been trying out some nice new recipes, and I've got a new food-related obsession... More on that next time! ;-)

- I finally caved in and created an account at Swap-bot. I'm starting out with a couple of simple, low cost swaps, and I'm really enjoying my experience so far! Do any of you swap at Swap-bot? Share your stories!

What have you been up to in the past weeks? Crafting, reading, baking, or just enjoying the lovely weather?

Time for toadstools

My swap packages have been received, so I can finally post about them! I thought I'd start with the Buy Nothing/Green Swap I joined in an effort to de-stash. One of my partner's themes was toadstools, so I made her a toadstool pincushion!

Here it is hanging out in my craft corner... I almost didn't want to send it off! :-) But my partner seemed to like it, so I'm glad I did!

Continuing on the toadstool theme, I also made a little mixed paper notebook. I assembled the pages and sewed them together on my sewing machine, and it worked beautifully!

Don't you just love toadstools?

Lots of goodies in the mail

I received some lovely treasures in the mail yesterday! I was having a really bad day (I hate job hunting!) and they really cheered me up. Look at my loot!

Of course I started ripping them up at once, and this is the first thing I found: My lovely Valentine from Jenny of Stitcher and Scribbler! I won her Valentines giveaway last week, and these are the goodies that she sent. An adorable felt pin, lovely Valentines-themed art and some cute bunny Valentines. Plus, look at that gorgeous ribbon! Thank you SO much Jenny!

Next was my notebook from the Collate project, a journal collaboration organized by Sweet Jessie. Paper crafters and journal writers from all over the world gathered and sent in 50 pieces of pretty, vintage or repurposed papers, and Jessie had them all bound into these beautiful notebooks. Look at all the papery goodness!

Some of my favorite pages:

Thank you Jenny and Jessie, you made my day!

Swap stuff

At the beginning of the year I joined a couple of small craft swaps over at Craftster. Cutting back on swapping is one of the many ways I'm trying to save money this year, but it's way too much fun to give up completely! So I've decided I'm only joining swaps that are small, low postage, and allow me to work from my stash.

For these latest swaps I decided to make some stamps - I bought about four sheets of grade A PZ Kut a while back so it was a great way to de-stash! These are the stamps I made!

A little mermaid to suit my swap partner's mermaid theme. This was probably one of the fiddliest stamps I've ever made, and I'm not completely happy with the way the scales turned out. I need to get a finer blade!

This little turtle was adapted from an image in my partner's Wists, so it's not my original artwork, but I still really like it!

Pretty paper

I just joined a really exciting swap over at sweet jessie's blog, called the Collate: project. I'll be getting an awesome notebook with pretty papers from the whole world! Yay! This is the batch of papers I sent to Jessie for the swap:

I haven't done much crafting this week because I'm busy preparing for a major exam next week. I did take the time to stamp up some bear postcards though! What do you think?

Happy Birthday to me!

Knit birthday cupcake by Anny Purls

Yes that's right, today is my 24th birthday! Keith just woke me up with breakfast in bed, and we're going out for dinner later. I'm celebrating finishing a huge group assignment and an equally huge swap package too, so it's a good day!

I have been crafting a lot lately, but I won't be able to show you until my partner has received... Can't wait! If you want to see more Harry Potter-themed crafty goodness, I recommend the Craftster swap gallery or this group. Hope you're all having a good day too!

Patchy

I received some really lovely stamps in the recent stamp swap, and I've been looking for interesting ways to use them. Last night I had an idea - so of course I had to whip out my fabrics and try it out straight away. I made these fabric patches:


The tree and monogram stamps are from the swap, but the little birdies are my own design. The fabric is a heavy-weight cotton from IKEA, and I used a black VersaCraft inkpad to stamp the images. I think the images might have turned out clearer on a fabric with a higher thread-count, but the "faded" look is sort of nice too. I really like these patches, and I have a project in mind for them already... More on that later this week! I also made a couple of notecards just to try out my new black ink pad:


And just for fun, here are the stamps I carved for the swap. They have all been received now so I can finally show them. Not nearly as advanced as some in the swap, but I'm still learning... I'm especially proud of the cow:

Stamps and swapping

Today has been a busy crafting day! Unfortunately I can't show you everything that I made just yet... I finished two ATCs for the Alphabet ATC swap at Craftster, but I'll have to wait to post pictures of them until they are received. I was really pleased with my cards this time - it's always like a little bereavement, sending them away... But hopefully their new owners will like them too. Here they are, on their way to the post office:



Looking through all my papercraft supplies also inspired me to carve another stamp. I recently bought a Speedball stamp carving kit off Ebay, and fell instantly in love with it! This time I knew I wanted to make a bird stamp, and after a bit of sketching this is what I came up with:



This is only the second stamp I've ever made, and obviously it's not perfect. I had a lot of trouble with the sharp corners, but hopefully I'll get better with some more practice. I'm also thinking about trying to buy some more Speedball cutter blades, the kit only came with two and none of them are really good for details. Any stamp carvers out there? What tools do you like to use? Anyway, despite the imperfections I'm really proud of this stamp. I can see myself getting a lot uf use out of it. Here it is on a bunch notecards, with one of my colored pencils for size:



And a closeup of the little birdie:



I had so much fun making this! I'm thinking of carving another birdie to put in the upper corner of the notecards as well. I'm going to go to the craft store tomorrow to buy some more inkpads (right now all I have is this brown one), so you'll probably be seeing some more notecards and stationary in the near future. I'm also trying to think of other ways to use this stamp. Do you have any ideas?

It's getting late and I should have started on some of my required reading for my summer class (I'm taking Economic History - sounds like fun doesn't it?) this evening, so that's all for today. Have a good evening!