Exciting Mail

One of the blogs I read, Alexa Lett, had a giveaway every day before Christmas, and I won two of them.

These are backwards, this is the 2nd day I won, a cool pillow

and this is from the first day I won, an altered BINGO card. The picture on the left is the thank you card she sent me.

 

Thank you so much Alexa.

It's Baby shower time

I'm attending the baby shower of a co-worker today, so I whipped up a card and decorated a bag to go with it.

 

 I have a ton of these green bags from a local shop, so I decided to use one. I started by adding a brown strip to cover the shop's name, on top of that is a vintage German book page. The circle started out as a file folder I bought at a garage sale, I layered green and blue Washi tape on top of it. The baby is a boy, so my first thought was to use a lot of blues and greens, and pick through my stuff for an image, as I don't have any baby stuff. In my stash, I found these dinosaur stickers, so I fussy fut the purple one, and added him to the circle. A giant googly eye was a nice finishing touch.

The card started from the dinosaur image. I made an orange card (it's much more orange than it shows), and layered some blue and green paper and then the dinosaur image.
The inside isn't very interesting, just a dinosaur stamp in all four corners, colored in bright colors.

I hope my co worker likes them.

Ticket Swap

I participated in a ticket swap in one of my Yahoo! groups. We were to decorate 10 tickets and send them to the hostess. Here's what I received back:

 And the backs:

I searched all my pictures and found I did not take pictures of the ones I made. That's very unfortunate, I really liked them.

Button Floozies Swap

I participated in the Button Floozies Christmas Ornament Swap again this year. Here's what I received.

From Pamela White of The Finders Keepers Blog:

 From Laura Sheppard, no blog:

 From Laurie Jackson of Indulge your Shelf:

 And here's what I made:

 
They're little stockings, the buttons are all vintage, the trim is vintage, the front is a dish towel I was sent in a swap, there are two kinds of backs, one a red striped dish towel and two, a red and white patterned piece of fabric.

I'm still waiting on the last ornament for the swap, but I wanted to get this post up before I forgot.

Vintage Stocking Swap

I received my stocking from my parter today. Here's what I saw when I opened the box:

 And the contents:

 The gorgeous stocking she made for me, a mesh bag filled with thread, hankies and a frog, a metal angel, a cute ornament, a tiny bottle of buttons, and a bag of holiday pieces.

 A frosty the snowman book, some iron-on transfers, a couple vintage Christmas cards, a notepad, a bunch of lace, some fabric, a cute deer ornament, a couple charms and a needle book.

Here's what I sent her:

I bought this stocking and added the lace and fabric flowers to the top.

I won't show what the contents of the stocking are, as she's going to open it closer to Christmas.
I'm not that patient, I had to open mine today.

Thank you, Stevie-Lynn

Handmade Stockings

In my last post I mentioned some stockings I had made, here they are.

This first one started out as a crazy quilt piece I bought in August:

 Here's the stocking, I had to add the bright piece at the bottom because the blue was disintigrating:

 This second one is made out of a piece of sheer fabric I got from a co-worker, the top trim is a different piece of sheer fabric folded over, and some green velvet ribbon on the top. The sparkly piece on the front is a sticker I got in a swap, I tacked it down with some embroidery thread.

 This last one started out as a scarf. The heart doily and white trim at the top are from garage sales. The beads at the top are actually part of a necklace, I thought they colors went great with the colors on the scarf. Today, I added a cream piece of ribbon for a hanger.

These are all now hanging in my living room doorway, until I figure out what to do with them. I guess I could always keep them for another stocking swap.

updates

WOW! Long time no see, sorry about that. Once I got into holiday swaps and moving at the library and Thanksgiving, time got away from me.

Anywho, remember this and this, that I made for the altered paintbrush swap? Well, here's what I received back:

 I love the layers of lace and trim on this one. It's right up my alley.

This one is so beautiful with the pink and beads.

I've also been working on my stocking for Cerri's Vintage Stocking swap. I have 3 made and I altered one. Every stocking I started, I ended up not liking in some way, one wasn't traditional, one's a little too green, and one I'm not entirely sure how it will hold up. I have some finishing touches to do on one of them, then I will do a post on the ones I DID NOT send. They're still pretty cute, but my partner indicated she wanted something more traditional, and they mostly didn't turn out traditional.
I'm also working on getting a box of holiday supplies ready to send out to a partner, and I signed up for a swap to send ornaments to a partner.
Plus, starting on 11/16, we started moving the library, and some time last week I caught some kind of bug, so I pretty much slept and ate Wed through Fri.

How's life with you all?