Waxing poetic

A couple of years ago I discovered Leafcutter Designs, run by Lea Redmond. Lea has an amazing imagination, and she likes to create collaborative projects. I'm a sucker for these types of things, so I signed up for Waxing Poetic, where we were asked to come up with alternative names for crayons. Lea recently contacted all her "lovely crayon poets", and sent us a box.

The box itself is beautiful, delicate, old-fashioned and perfect.

I can't exactly remember what I named my crayons. Only a couple stand in my mind. A pink one was "Aunt Connie's bathroom tiles". Another one was "Travis Denimore", paired with "What could have been and wasn't", in honor of a failed love story. None of them were in my box. The ones I got were amazing.

What a fantastic project! This little box made my day. Thank you, Lea.

Swapping

I love swaps because I love surprises, especially if they come to me in the mail. Not knowing what's inside a package or an envelope is terribly thrilling. I have been swapping since I was in junior high and discovered that there was such a thing as penpals. I managed to amass a huge collection of postcards courtesy of penpals from all over the world. There are boxes of them at my mom's house. Through the years I have exchanged music tapes, books and seeds. These days I focus on creative swaps, and right now I am participating in two: Aunt Peaches has organized a wonderful Valentine swap. All participants are to mail three handmade valentine cards, and expect the same number in return. I made these:

I had been wanting to try sewing on paper, after seeing this type of project online many times. Well, I need a lot of practice. It is harder than I thought. I was nonetheless encouraged by Peaches' words:

If you are saying "But I can't make anything nice!" then you are *exactly* the sort of person who should participate.

So there you have it, world, my imperfect, amateurish cards are on their way to countries far and near. I hope that my choice of non-traditional Valentine colors earns me some points.

My second swap is organized by the Eco Etsy team. This is a great group of environmentally conscious artisans. I love this team, and have learned much about managing my microscopic Etsy business thanks to them. Last year we swapped gifts post Christmas. We called it "The Regift", and it was so fun. This year I believe we're exchanging our handmade goodies, and I was thinking about offering one of these. What do you think?

I am looking forward to seeing what I get from both swaps, and I promise to share the loot with you.


—♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥—

Update: 2/5/12

Yesterday I received the first Valentine! It was so exciting to find a chubby envelope in the mailbox. It was chubby because of this:

Jill from Smalltropolis was one of my secret Valentine pals, and I am so glad! She has a great tutorial for this adorable frayed heart. Jill, thank you so much!

—♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥——♥♥—♥♥—

Update: 2/10/12

Valentine #2 is here!

It was made by Claudia in San Francisco (virtually in my backyard). I love the paper, mottled with little bits of color, and the doily-like, hand-drawn border around the heart.

When you open the card, you find hearts cut from the pages of a book.

I don't know if serendipity was at play, or if Claudia chose to cut one of the hearts this way, but I found this really funny

Claudia, I loooooove this card! Thank you so much!

Toilet Paper Tubes Christmas Wreath

As some of you may know, I love to craft, and I especially love to reuse and repurpose things that were otherwise destined to the garbage. This is why, when I ran into this tutorial, I got very excited.

Speaking of garbage, I have a confession to make. Every time I go to a Michaels store, I walk the silk flower aisles and pick up whatever flowers and leaves are on the ground. I always ask if it is OK to take them home, and the answer is invariably, "Sure, go ahead, they get swept up at the end of the day anyway". Thank you, Michaels, for letting me rescue these perfectly good flowers!

In the last few weeks, with the holidays approaching, many of the flowers I have gathered were poinsettias. I have also found glittery pine cones, red berries, holly, and the usual holiday suspects.

I followed the directions of the tutorial, and made a whole bunch of tp flowers. With glue gun in hand, I assembled them into a wreath shape, and embellished the resulting wreath with my Michaels finds.

My front door is white on the inside, and the red looks great against the white background. I'm very happy with the results. The hardest part was cutting the tubes. I did not listen to the tutorial, and used a pair of scissors instead of the craft knife. It is hard to cut cardboard with scissors, so I only did one tube at a time. But once all the flowers were ready, it took just a few minutes to assemble the whole thing.

It makes me happy to know that pretty much all this was destined for the landfill, and instead it is gracing a corner of my home. I had fun making this wreath, and it may not be the last one I make. I sure have enough tp tubes and flowers to keep going!

Thanksgiving weekend is usually when we start decorating the house for Christmas. On your marks, get set, go!