Red Crayon Swap

Back in March I hosted a Crayon Swap in ravelry.  Everyone picked out a color that they wanted the items in their package to be.  I put those names on those crayon colors and then drew out crayons and matched them up with partners.  I was matched with someone who wanted red items.  Everyone had to make at least 4 items with the following in mind: a card, an accessory, something knit/crochet/woven, and something made from a recycled item.  I kind of went overboard, lol.  In the end when it was time to mail off the package, my partner went MIA.  So I got to keep all of these items.

I bought a small red clipboard and a red box to mail everything in.

The inventory card in the envelope has red cable knit on the front of it.

I had packed the felt fortune cookies in the Hershey bag.

On the far right is a little experiment that I did.  It is a hanging sculptural piece that has plastic bottle rings in the center of each circle.  You can also see the crochet soda tab flower pin among the soda tab bracelets.

The hot pads use the same 3 skeins of cotton yarn, but I reversed the placement of the two outer colors.

I prefer the darker red on the outside of the petals vs the inside.

One of my signature items is the juice pouch purse.  It has a ribbon handle and a zipper closure.

I've made a few of these crochet egg hot pads over time.  I used 2 strands of cotton yarn for it.

I found the pattern for this hot pad at Michael's craft store.  It is one of the free patterns on the paper pads that are scattered around the yarn section.  I used up 2.5 skeins of cotton yarn making these 2 floral hot pads.  It is an easy pattern that looks really great.

After reading this blog post, I was inspired to make these paint chip bookmarks.  The tone-on-tone one uses stickers and the other is drawn on with a black pen.  These would also make great gift tags.

This friendship bracelet was made from embroidery floss.

It was made using a cardboard circle.  You cut 17 notches in it and a hole in the center.  You then fold 8 threads in half, and pull the folded half through the center hole.  Next knot the folded part and divide the threads (16 of them) and place them into 16 of the 17 notches.  Then you count 3 threads from the empty notch (clockwise) and move it to the empty notch.  Repeat this and that is how the bracelet is made.  When you have the length that you want (remove threads from cardboard), you divide the threads in half (8 and 8) and braid them and knot them.  Very easy.

This fabric postcard was made using fabric selvages (the non-fraying sides).  While sewing it I accidental pressed something and made a bunch of As across it.  Thats how I learned that my sewing machine can sew letters.  Then I stitched the word "RED" across another part of the postcard.  

Then I found a poem about the color red on the internet and wrote it on the back of the postcard.

One night we ordered Chinese take-out for dinner, and my fortune cookie said something about the color red.  That inspired me to make over 40 eco-fi felt fortune cookies for this swap.  Each one has a fact about the color red inside of it.

This sturdy gift bag uses about 6 large Hershey bar wrappers and red duct tape.  I made one like it about 8 years ago and it has held up really well over the years.  Here is my video tutorial on how to make one.

For this garland I just crochet 2 rows around some plastic bottle rings.  I joined them together with the crochet ends.

This scrubbie was made by doubling this pattern.   The crochet soda tab bracelets were made using this pattern.

Here are the video tutorials on how to make the crochet soda tab bracelet and the X style soda tab bracelet.

This is a toadstool pincushion was made from eco-fi felt and a plastic bottle cap.  Here is the website where I learned how to make it.  I like to make the circle for the top a little larger than what the directions say.

It was really fun making all of these red items.