I received an awesome package from kissing.shadows today! Crochet is a craft that I've been meaning to learn for ages and this convinced me that I need to make that a top priority. Kissing.shadows is seriously a crochet magician! I'm beyond impressed. Anyway, on to the goodies!

Gratuitous group shot:

3 amigurumi fellas and a lovely clutch!

I had the brilliant idea that I would do this swap for my sister - her birthday is later this month and she is an absolute superhero fiend. Unfortunately, that now means that I have to wait to show her any of it, which is killing me!

I told kissing.shadows that my sister appreciates cute twists on superhero stuff, and she came up with the perfect bag:


The lining is so fun!


And the amigurumi!

Of course, I'm not totally generous. Loki is mine (all mine! hahahaha!).

Thank you so much kissing.shadows! You've been a fantastic partner!

I made up this ipad sleeve for my dad for father's day:



I stitched it up from a bit of fabric from my stash, and stenciled it with acrylic paint. I know that's not the best paint for the job, but I figured since he won't be washing it too much it should be okay (and I really didn't want to go buy fabric paint). It was my first time using freezer paper stencils, so that was very fun. It's a bit smudgy in a couple of places, but overall I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

On the back, a very important reminder:



I lined it with a bit of terry cloth (cut from an old bathrobe and dyed), to help my dad make sure that he always knows where his towel is. Of course, function-over-form fellow that he is, he took one look at the liner and said, "Oh, cool! A built in screen cleaner!"



I would have liked to have given it a more secure closure, but I was sewing the whole thing by hand (my machine is on the fritz right now) and by the time I got to that part I was very much ready to be finished.

The pictures are taken on the tissue paper that I wrapped it in, stamped with a hand carved stamp. Here's a shot of it all wrapped up:



I had a lot of fun geeking out with this one. C & C would be very much appreciated!

I received an absolutely amazing package from bowlordie today!

Here's all of my loot together:

A felted bag that is the perfect size for bebopping around with (and the perfect color, too!), a doodle-y mug, a dala horse inspired bookmark (the felt is attached to an elastic band - so clever!), a linocut dala horse stamp, a journal and memo pad (definitely going to be using both profusely; I'm such a scribbler), and a felted gnome home!

Here's a close up of the sweet dala horse stamp, complete with its own sweet dala horse bag!


And another shot of the gnome home!

It's all wonderful, but I absolutely adore this! I can't stop giggling and smiling at how adorable it is.

Here it is again, settled in on my bookshelf, complete with resident gnome:



Thank you so much, bowlordie! This is a fantastic package and you were a fantastic swap partner!

I received my absolutely fantastic package from imera yesterday! I was hoping to wait until the light is better to take pictures, but we have more gray days on the horizon and I'm too excited to wait, so here they are! Excuse the quality - they in no way capture the loveliness that imera sent!

First, the individual items all wrapped up and numbered:


Parcel number one was this lovely scarf, studded with little jewels:

The colors are absolutely gorgeous, and look great with my hair, if I may say so myself.

Parcel number two was probably my favorite. My first hoop! It already has a place of honor on my wall!

Another shot that shows off the wonderful textures a bit better:


And then the main event - the box itself!


Books and dried flowers! Imera could not have picked better. I am a total book worm and love dried flowers more than live ones (probably because I can take care of them :/).

The contents:

Yeah, those chocolates lasted about 10 minutes.
Cameos!

Some lovely jewelry:

Imera said that she painted the necklace. I am in awe of her skills.
And lovely vintage stationery:

How sweet are those scallops!

Imera also sent along the paper for the stationery...

...and some delicious candied almonds!

Thank you so much for everything, Imera! It's all lovely. You made my first swap fantastic!

My dad - who is very creative and crafty, but couches it in macho terms like "maker" - has some scheme for putting together a mug using a bit of driftwood that he found for the handle. He asked me to etch him a jar for the its body.





I used vinyl stickers for the lettering. They're a little smudgier than I would have liked, but I think that for my dad's purposes, they worked out okay.

The quote in the second shot reads: "what makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." The quotes are both from The Little Prince, my absolute favorite book. My dad recently moved out to Arizona, so the desert quote seemed fitting.

This past Christmas I decided that I wanted to make lavender sachets as gifts for my mom and her sisters. So, I did a google search for bulk lavender and made what seemed like a reasonable guess as to how much I would need. Lesson learned: I cannot estimate to save my life. After making 12 sachets for my mom and aunts (3 apiece - don't worry, I don't have that many aunts), I had used barely a quarter of the lavender I ordered. Since then, I've been making sachets for every appropriate crafty opportunity, trying to run down my outrageous stock. Here are the results:


These are the sachets that I made for my partner in the Old Fashioned Romantic Swap (I'm hard pressed to think of a place where lavender sachets would be more fitting). The silhouettes are based on her favorite couple, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.

A few gratuitous detail shots:


After finishing those, I made these for my friends.


I only learned how to do French knots recently and was so thrilled with the ability. I think I got the enthusiasm out of my system on this one.

This one is a bunch of different types of couching.


I've got them all wrapped up for Valentine's gifts!


A full 18 sachets later, I still haven't used up half of the lavender I ordered. It's okay though -  they're a pretty neat little craft. It's been great fun getting to experiment with so many different kinds of stitches!


ps - Sorry the pictures are so huge. I really need to figure out resizing.

I'm so glad you like it, imera!

This is the picture that the sachets were based on, although I'm not sure how clearly that comes across.


I'm so sorry that the shell broke, though! I was super excited about the naval/water/Wentworth connection.

The creativity in these boxes is amazing! I've already seen more twists and techniques than I'd even considered!

This is a little piece I made up for my sister, who is, with good reason, in love with the Tokidoki-Marvel collaboration. It's very simple - almost entirely backstitch and satin stitch - but it was a lot of fun to make. I worked on it over a weekend. The fabric was scavenged from a pair of truly horrible pants and all of the thread came from my stash.

Here is the whole thing:

I think it's about 5"x5".


Here's a detail of the face:

I wasn't sure what the most efficient way to make the stars would be, so I tried slightly different things on all of them. I think this one turned out the cutest!

Here is the t-shirt that it is based on:

I was too lazy to do any kind of transfer pattern, so I just freehanded it. It's definitely a little wonky in some places, but I still like it!