Crayon Swap Package & Other Items

Before the Summer I lead a swap called the Crayon Swap.  We each picked a color that we wanted someone to make things for us in, and then we each made items in that color for the other person.  Recently I found out that one person's partner never followed through with the swap; so, I made her a bunch of things with her color in mind (turquoise) as an angel gift.  An angel gift is when someone sends something to another person without wanting anything more than a thank you in return.  The diamond patterned item is a notebook made from a juice pouch cardboard box.  There is a crochet soda tab flower pin, a plastic bottle cap pincushion that looks like a flower, a juice pouch notebook, a juice pouch coin purse, a small drawstring bag made from a t-shirt sleeve, 5 paper bead stitch markers, an artist trading card (my drawing), a crochet cotton scrubby, a crochet cotton dishcloth, and a crochet cotton floral hot pad.  She received everything last week and loved them all.  I'm so happy that she liked everything and that she got something from this swap.

Here is a close up of the hot pad.

Here is a close up of the scrubby.  Normally I knit scrubbies, but I found a crochet pattern for them.  It works the same way as the knit one: increase on one side and decrease on the other side, then do a running stitch on the sides to make the top and bottom like a circle / spiral.  Very easy.

The top stitch markers are the blue paper beads ones that I made for her.  I'm new at making stitch markers, so they aren't perfect. I found some cool skull beads at the craft store, and made some fun Halloween stitch markers for myself.

Here is the front of a card that I drew and mailed to a friend recently.

I then took an out of date calendar and made an envelope out of the October page.

Here is one of the Summer months calendar page turned into an envelope.

Here is a recent artist trading card (ATC) that I made using watercolor paints and a black pen.  An ATC is 3.5" x 2.5" - the same size as a baseball trading card.

ETA: Here are more photos of the swap package.

Raffle basket & Angler fish

It has been a while since I last made a blog post. I basically crashed in the creativity department. It happens every so often where I don't want to make anything for at least a week. I did make things for deadlines, but nothing for myself or for presents. Then as I was starting to get the creative itch, I became sick. I couldn't do anything for a few days.

I made this juice pouch tote bag last week. It was a part of some items that I was donating to my church's holiday fair for the green comity's raffle basket.

Here are the items that I donated for the raffle table. The two baskets were used to hold money and tickets for one of the two raffles. The other items went into the green comity's raffle basket. There were a lot of Earth friendly products in that basket. I worked at the raffle basket table from 9 am - 3 p.m. on Saturday. The green comity's basket got a lot of tickets, which was great.

My 10 year old had to make a brochure report on the angler fish. You might remember the angler fish from Finding Nemo. He also had to make a model to go with the brochure. He made his out of clay. I told him that I would knit him one as well. I stayed up until 3 am on Sunday to finish it in time for him to take to school this morning. The pattern also has how to make the parasitic male. I might make that one tomorrow. I used a recycled bendy juice box straw to support the light. This was not an easy thing to knit. My fingers hurt. I learned a few new techniques. The instructions were very easy. The pattern came from a book on amigurumi knits.

Tonight I am sewing in the ends of the knitted dishcloths that I made.

How to clean juice pouches

Watch my new video on youtube on how to clean juice pouches. This is the first step that you need to take before you can craft with them. You can see other how tos with juice pouches in earlier posts & in future tv show episodes.