Craft Swap Goodies!

My awesome craft swap partner, Robin, has officially received her package of goodies from the Trick or Treat bag swap. That means I can post the crafty goodness on here! First off:

The most important part of the swap was to craft a really awesome bag. I happen to be well versed in the bag making, so that was pretty easy. I did have some major fabric-choosing anxiety, though, and walked around JoAnn Fabric with a completely different scheme that I didn't even like, before I went back for the plaid fabric and found the cute little vintage print hidden among the thanksgiving fabrics. This is the first time I've done a trim with a bag, and I think the little pom pom trim turned out really well. I also reinforced the handle with batting, which is my new favorite idea to keep the handle comfy and also to keep it from getting all scrunched up at the top.

Robin has two boys, Jakob and Bailey, so I couldn't leave them out of the craftiness! I made each of them a little bag with their name on it with the left over lining fabric. I free-handed their names with a bleach pen and added a little spookiness to each one.

The boys also got their own candy loot, which was a little more their speed. Skittles, Starburst, and Chocolate eyeballs. Awesome. I think much like a 7-year-old boy, so it was fun to do this for them. :)

Here is all the goodies that went inside Robin's bag all packaged up. I made four napkins out of the plaid linen fabric and used that to package everything. Below is the goodies (sans candy) all laid out:

I made that awesome potholder out of some sparkley cotton yarn I found at Hancock Fabric in Sioux Falls, SD. It was on super sale for 93 cents a skein! I had made it a while ago, not really knowing where it would end up, but it was the perfect addition to Robin's bag loot. Also, you can kind of see the rosette pin I made out of that same plaid fabric I'm obsessed with. I've tried to make rosettes out of fabric before, but haven't had much success. I threw out the rule book and tutorials I had found on-line and just made it the way I thought that it should be made, and it worked perfectly! I get a little obsessed with rules sometimes and forget the instinct part of crafting.

Finally, the piece-de-resistance was the crafted items for Robin and the boys. I purchased a candy-corn hat pattern, as she had listed one on her wist and I was dying to make one. It knit up really quickly, as it's a super thick yarn, and it's totally adorable with the little point on the head. She said she wore it out and got some great responses from people, so that's nice to hear. Also, I found a cute little batty pattern, which I love, and made one for each boy out of the remainder of the sparkley black cotton yarn from SD. I think they turned out great!

The Great Pumpkin Experiment

I have a secret... a shameful and embarrassing secret.  It's about an addiction... sometimes denied, always satisfying.  I'm addicted to craft magazines.  The really cheesy holiday ones are best.  Particularly Halloween and Christmas.  I love them, buy them voraciously, squirrel them away for reference the following year.  But I always buy new... to compare, you know.  

Well, it seems this halloween has a bit of a craft magazine trend... gothic, romantic, turn-of the century, wonderful.  I love it.  All of it.  The costumes are historical, the decor is old fashioned, and the pumpkins, well, they're black and covered in glitter.  I can do that, I think to myself as I see the adds for $40 glitter-covered pumpkins from Pottery Barn.  So, I hit the Dollar Tree... my favorite source for craft goodies.  Shameful, again, I know.  Whatever.  I don't judge your dirty little secrets.  Here is an example of the crappy, foam-core pumpkin "decor" I found... 

Buck a piece, friends.  Damn good buy, I'd say.  But only for experimenting with black paint and glitter!  Otherwise, waste of money and crap-tastic looking on your table.  So, we begin:  

I painted them first with a layer of Black acrylic paint...  

I missed a step, but once they were completely painted black, I painted over with a layer of black craft paint with glitter in it... some weird decorative paint I got last Christmas when I was making decorations for my tree... it's hard to find black Christmas decorations.  I'm a little bit dark, even when it's not Halloween.  

Once the black paint dried, I mod podged the heck out of 'em and covered them with black glitter.  In case you were wondering, I found the big jar of black glitter at Hancock Fabrics.  It was pretty great, I have to admit.  Or maybe it was the wine...
Nope... it was the glitter.  Close-up shot.  Pretty!  Two of the pumpkins got this treatment, and then two of them got a nice treatment with the silver puffy paint.  I haven't used the puffy paint in a LONG time (I think since last Christmas helping out a co-worker with stockings for her and her hubby) so I made a couple of splatters, but I was able to cover them up... the second one I did turned out better... 

Here's one of each kind... the sparkly one (which you can't really see with the camera) and the first "viney" puff painted one.  I think they look really awesome.  

And here they are in their current resting place... the trifle bowl filled with pebbles, next to the armadillo.  I think it says a little something about my mental stability.  You can see the second puff-painted one in the bowl... it has little dots that look like they're dripping from the top of the punkin'.  

So that's the latest experiment.  I might need a break until Sunday.  But there will be more food-related goodness posted at that time, so stay tuned for my culinary feats and fiascos as well as what are sure to be more and more crazy craft-magazine inspired and plain-old random projects.