Button Floozies Ornament Swap

In my last post, I showed you what I made for the Button Floozies Ornament swap. Now I get to show you what I got in return:
This cute little stocking came from Terri Wilkerson, it also came with all the fun goodies in the picture. I love the stocking idea, and the buttons are soo cute. I'm getting to be a big fan of the low color Christmas decorations (I just made a low color stocking for another swap I'm in).

This cute tag is from Susie A. I love how she decided to use a dress form, very cute.

And this little beauty is from Joni Reinhart. I love the idea. I would have never thought of making a little person. I also love the sparkly button.

Come back tomorrow for a post on some steampunk charms I made for a swap, I'll also have something for trade if anyone's interested.

Christmas Button Floozies Swap

Because I love buttons so much, I'm following the blog Button Floozies. They've have two swaps so far, the second being the Christmas Ornament swap.
Here's the definition of a button ornament from the site: Definition of a button ornament:
A Christmas ornament made to hang on a tree or to be a small shelf or table accent, that is decorated with buttons. The buttons do not necessarily need to be the only decoration element of the ornament -- but it should be a main or special element of the decoration. Your ornament should be handmade.
I had no idea what to make, then I saw an ornament my mother had made awhile ago in the shape of a heart with buttons on it. That was my starting point. I decided to do a round ornament instead, I first wanted it to look like a wreath, but after sewing buttons in a circle, it needed something else, so I added another button in the middle. Here's how they turned out:
All the buttons are vintage, except for a few on the red wreath, I didn't have quite enough red buttons. We only needed to make 3, as we were in groups of 4, but I made an extra for me, and one for my stocking swap partner (more on that later). I kept the green one for me. I have heard from one person, that they've received their ornament, and I figure others will be getting them soon.
Go here for the ornaments I received. And go here, to see what other people made and received.

I've also decided I need to join more swaps where I can sew. Between this swap, the pennant swap and the stocking swap (mentioned above), I love hand sewing, it's so peaceful to do while watching TV. After I mail and get word from my stocking swap partner, I will show that. But, I will mention, I LOVE how it turned out (so much so, that I've thought about keeping it and making another one for her. But, I won't).

Maybe I just need to sit down and sew more for fun.

Pretty Pennants

Apparently I don't have just one post on how I did these, so here it is. I signed up to do a Pretty Pennants swap for my The Sum of All ATCs Yahoo group. We had a pattern to follow, and we had free range otherwise to make them however we wanted with some type of hanger. I originally planned to make mine out of vintage hankies, but since the pattern was from an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper they were too small.
So, I decided to use a vintage scarf I had. I cut out 3 pennants and glued them to some quilt batting.

My original thought was to sew on the vintage buttons at the top, one of these has 4 hole buttons. Then I added the crocheted circly piece and the green button.

I was going to sew ric rac to the edges, but couldn't find any vintage pieces for a price I was willing to pay. The trim I ended up using I got at a garage sale. I had the hardest time figuring out how to finish them.

I finally just decided to sew around the edges. I decided to add ribbon to the corners for the hanger. The ribbon also just happened to match pretty well in color.

This is my back, this one's a little messier than the ones I mailed out, because I figured out the ribbon thing after sewing the back on. The ones that I mailed out have the ribbon in between the felt and the front. I also added a little tag on the back with my information on it.

These turned out to be made with mostly vintage items. Everything on the front: the scarf, circly thing, buttons, and trim all came from garage sales. The ribbon I got in a swap. I used new quilt batting, felt and thread.

I've been meaning to do some kind of sewing with my vintage stuff, and this is a great start. I have more vintage pieces I hope to sew with in the future.

Pretty Pennants

Remember this post? I made these great vintage pennants for a Pretty Pennants swap for a Yahoo group. Here's mine again,
And here are the two I received:

This one's from Barbara DeLisle's, I love the stitching on this one. Such a beautiful ues of the little touches of color and beads.

This one's by Iris B (no blog). I love the way she embellished the paper with glitter and gemstones.

Merry Moos

I signed up for a swap called Merry Moos on TheSumOfAllATCs Yahoo group. A Moo is a card that 1"x3". These were supposed to be Christmas themed and have a way to be hung.
Since I collect snowmen, when I think about Christmas, snowmen are the first thing to come to mind (I hope no one in the swap minds). I took some holiday paper, cut it to size, and glued it to cardstock with the patterned paper on the outside for a thicker card. I added these little plastic icicles to the bottom. I stamped a snowman on some snowflake paper. I cut the poky pieces of the backs of some star brads and glued them on the top. There is a white eyelet with some white raffia for the hanging portion. The last Moo with the diamond dangles is mine because I ran out of the icicles by the time I got to mine. You can also see I ran out of the raffia and had to use some silver cording.

For the backs I just typed up the name of the swap, the hostess, my name and my email. Then I printed it out and glued it to the back.

I kept putting these off, because I kept thinking 'They're not due until November, I have plenty of time'. Then today I got an email reminding me of when they are due, and realized It's November. I decided I needed to get them done.

What are you all working on?

Question

So, I'm hating blog with embedded comments. You know those ones that when you click on the post, or post a comment, it goes to a page with the post and then the box for the comments at the end. For some reason, when I go to post a comment, after I type in my comment, I've had to copy my comment, because when I click on Google Account, it goes to a page saying my current account is not authorized to view this page, click here to log into another account. So, I log back in with my google account, and then I see my comment with my avatar picture and the word verification. After typing the word verification, and pushing publish I go back to the page about not being authorized to view that page. I log in again with my google account, and finally my comment is published.

Is anyone else having this trouble, and would anyone know how to fix it? It's becoming annoying, and I want to leave comments a little more quicker. Now, I'm not having any problems with the blogs that when you click to post a comment, it takes you to a full page of comments, or the little pop up page.

Any help would be great.

Fall Cards

This month, the theme for my CollageATCs Yahoo group was Fall. I generally don't make mine until I get the other group members and then I can get inspiration from them. Well, I've had my craft stuff all other my floor for awhile, so I figured I'd just go for it. Here they are:
I got ideas for the two on the left from the cards found below. For the third card, I found the brown sparkly leaf on my floor and based everything off that. Everything but the leaf was from the collage pack.

This card inspired the brown card above. I thought about doing a pennant like theme with the leaves being the pennants. All the leaves are from the packet, and the word is from some stickers I bought. Unfortunately my word stickers must be kinda old because I am having the worst time getting the sticker to stay. I found the above pennant card in the 2011 January/February issue of Papercrafts magazine.

The sunflower card was inspired by this one. I like how I paired the golden colors together. The sunflower is the only piece from the packet. I also found the bird card in the 2011 Jaunary/February issue of Papercrafts. In the magazine, it's a color challenge, but I loved the sketch for the card, so I just went from there.

Next month's theme is buttons.