Facebook Flower Swap

I am part of a group on Facebook (Scrapbooking...Buy, Sell, Trade, & Share!) that consists mostly of local members. Local being the Midlands of South Carolina. :) We decided to do a flower swap for the month of March. We had to make 5 sets of 4 flowers. We could make them out of any material we wanted. The last several flower swaps that I have participated in, I have used paper to make my flowers. I didn't use paper for any of my flowers this time!

This flower is made with satin blanket binding that I received in a lace & trim swap. The tutorial I saw on YT said to melt the ribbon with a heat tool, but I couldn't get mine to melt. Maybe it was too thick? I cut a length of about 18" and hot glued it to a cardstock circle. I cut up a necklace for the "pearl" in the middle.

The second flower is made out of tulle. Check out this post for a link to the YT video instructions on how to make it. I love to make these flowers. They are so easy and add a light, airy feeling to your project.

I made the third flower out of wired Christmas ribbon. I cut 5 pieces that were 3" in length and folded them in half and attached them together with a brad. The bottom layer is made with 5 pieces cut at 4" in length. It sort of looks like a Christmas bow! No doubt they will get smashed in transit, but that's the great thing about wired ribbon~you can poof it right back up!

This last flower is my favorite of all! It is very spring-y. I used some baby yarn from my stash and wrapped it around 4 of my fingers about 20 times. I tied it in the center and then trimmed all the loops and fluffed it up. I had to make 5 of these for this swap and 3 more for another swap and used up almost all the yarn. I'm not sure if I even have enough yarn left to make a few for me! :( I have had the yarn for about 6 years so I probably can't find any more like it. You guys should feel special that I am sharing with you! LOL

I am working on building up my flower collection so I can't wait to see what the rest of my group made!

YPP Lunch Bag Upcycle

I have recently joined another swap site, Your Paper Pantry (YPP). There is a small yearly fee ($12) to join, but I think it will be totally worth it. Everything looks like it runs so smooth there. I like that the swaps are run on a very strict timeline. The crafters there are amazing! I love looking at all their swap goodies on YouTube and watched the videos for many months before deciding to join YPP.

At YPP they have a rule that all new members must complete 3 months of group swaps before they can do a partner swap. At first, I was a little disappointed, but then I realized that this is for the "safety" of everyone. If you prove that you can be responsible for sending in group swaps on time, then it makes it a little easier to trust you to do your best and follow the rules for partner swaps.

So, without further ado...here is my first group swap for YPP: March Lunch Bag Upcycle with the theme of Birthday.

These bags ended up very different than how I envisioned them when I started. I have this ribbon that has confetti and "happy birthday" in red, green, yellow, and blue. I really wanted to use that ribbon for this project. The problem~I couldn't find an image to match. One of the requirements of this swap is to use a digital image on the bag. Since I couldn't find anything I liked, I decided to pick some paper out of my stash and start there. I used this beautiful paper from Basic Grey, K&Co, and Recollections (for the plain cardstack). I went to one of my favorite vintage image sites, The Graphics Fairy, and just did a search for "birthday" and this digi was one of my choices. I loved it immediately! The colors are a perfect match to the paper that I chose.

 I printed the image about 2.5"x4" and then placed it on a mat made with Bazzil cardstock. I inked the edges of all my paper and my image with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The picture had green gems in the corners so I dug through my stash of gems until I found 4 matching gems to place over them. I don't have any Stickles, so I just used some Elmer's glitter glue on the white flowers in the middle. I originally put some gray/silver glitter around the "beaded" portion of the frame, but I didn't like it since the frame doesn't actually go all the way around the image. I kept that one for myself and did the rest of them without the glitter around the frame. I guess the recipient can add it on there if they choose. :)

I received this beautiful piece of wide lace in a swap from my new swap buddy, Julie, in Australia. Thanks, Julie! She also sent the other piece of lace that I used on this bag.

I can always use birthday gift bags and I can't wait to get my swaps back at the end of this month to see what great things I received!

Vintage Grunge Flower Swap

I am working on my flower collection so I have joined another flower swap at Mini Album Scraps. The theme for this swap was "vintage grunge" and the flowers had to be made out of book or music pages. For the two larger flowers I used a book that I picked up from the Dollar Tree. For the smaller flower I used a vintage dictionary page from The Graphics Fairy.

For this large flower I used the Sizzix 3-D Flower #2 Die. I wanted to use both of the large flowers from this die but they are so LARGE. This flower is pretty close to 4". I'm sure it's going to get squished in transit. Hopefully, it will fluff back up and be as good as new.

I found a tutorial *somewhere* on YouTube for this flower.

I learned how to make this flower from YouTube, as well. It's just 8 circles all scrunched up around a brad. Pretty simple.

 

Folded Journal Spot Swap

I created these journal spots for the February Journal Spot Swap at Mini Album Scraps. This month we had to make a journal spot that had a fold. Any type of fold was acceptable as long the journaling is inside a folded project.

I used two sheets of patterned paper from the Cotton Tails line by We R Memory Keepers. I made my journal spot from one of the invitations on the Wild Card cricut cartridge. I cut it at 4". I picked up the trim along the bottom from Hobby Lobby. I also included 4 tags cut at 4.5" (from Tags, Bags, Boxes & More cricut cartridge).

Check out the video below for all the scrappy details. :)