my little witch

I am not into Halloween, and witches, and dead and all that rides along with it. I can go into a very log explanation as to why,but I am sure most of you would not want to here it. Has to do with good and evil. Who is on the Lords side and all that.
   But the imagination, fairy tales,fantasy, folk lore I enjoy. This little bear, I found on a shelf in a local thrift store. She sat there all dusty and tattered. One of my swap partners said that she loved Halloween that it was her favorite holiday to decorate for. I was looking for something to include in her box. I picked the little bear up, she was only a dollar. I had this little debate with myself, you know," should I" or" shouldn't I". I thought, wouldn't she look adorable with new cloths, and she is such a perfect little size,and she is so cute,even if she is a witch. The "I should" won out. She came home with me.
  I went through my fabric stash and found the perfect satin purple with moons and stars on it, then I pulled some black satin from my boxes, and then some black organza. I was not sure if I had any black lace, but I must have picked some up at a yard sale some where.
   I carefully removed her dusty and torn cloths. Gave her a good bath. Turned her old clothes inside out and traced around them, making new patterns for her new set of clothes.  I carefully placed my patterns onto my fabric scraps, cut them out. Sat down at my sewing machine and did a little sewing. I then gathered up the little bear and  all my little sewing notions and the machine stitched pieces, and headed up to my television room turned the TV on and sat and stitched the hems of the dress, made the little apron out of lace, stitched the brim of the hat to the cone shaped piece I made for the hat. Gathered some organza and some sheer ribbon and embellished the little hat. Put some fiber fill into the hat. I sat it on her little head, and I was satisfied with my efforts. I took the little dress and slipped it over the head of the bear, and shaped it around her little body a stitch there, a fold here,and a gather around her waist. stitched her little lace apron on over her dress, then I took her new little cape turned the collar over and gathered it around her shoulders. Took some fancy beaded trim and added some ties to her cape. Made three tiny tiny black organza roses and glued them at her neck. Got my glue gun and took the little hat and glued it to her head, at an angle to give her a bit of an attitude, plus I wanted her to show off one of her little ears, she is a bear after all!

   set her up on my table and admired her for the rest of the evening. I am happy that she is going to a nice home.

Inspiration box swap

I joined a little swap a few weeks ago. The boxes were suppose to mailed out On the 26th of September. Mine didn't get mailed until yesterday. I was delayed, because of some delays with an embroidery order. The embroidery order was a HUGE challenge! It took up the last two weeks of August, and all of September! Talk about your stress level being on over drive!! Any way, it was finally finished and out the door! A great big YEY! on my part!
  So this week I was able to do my thing with my swap boxes. It was almost like a mini vacation for me, except that I had more embroidery orders pending that kind of detracted from my fun......
 The challenge was to complete two large box boxes and fill them with vintage or vintage inspired what nots and doo dads to inspire creativity for our swap partners. They all had to be black and white. I in the end kind of step out side the boundaries but..... I enjoyed myself!

my little witch, How I love her! I found her in tattered clothing at a local thrift store. I brought her home and stripped her of her awful dusty torn clothing and made her a whole new set of clothing. If I had more time I would have searched in my stash of stuff for a mini broom,or at least made her a trick or treat bag but....

this is some of the items I put together that I knew were not going to fit into the little match box but all well...I lace folders are vintage place-mats I tied around some images that I printed off the internet. Most of them came from the Graphicfairy, and some came from a Fancifultwist, there are some tags I made and some note-cards that I embellished.

These are glass salt shakers that I got at a yard sale.There was a pretty porcelain in the box that I really wanted, but I had to buy the whole box of them in order to get it! So what do you do but recycle!  I found some small cork stoppers that fit into the top of them, as the original  tops were cracked and broken. Cut a circle of sparkle black fabric and gathered that around the cork. To the top of that I glued some plastic Christmas ornaments that I spray painted black. Then I hand made about a dozen fabric roses and some other fabric flowers and glued them around the cork. Added some black and then some cream lace around the neck of the shakers, tied some hand made tags( I had the wish stamp custom made for me,the curly cue one came from the dollar bin at Micheal's Arts and Crafts) to them. I think they came rather precious. I did not put anything in them, because I was afraid it would spill out during shipping.

Here are my actual match boxes. I love them! I could not find black and cream paper at my local craft stores, and I so adored the flocked kind. I fell in love with the white with black scroll flowers on what I used. I wanted cream background, so I made a cup of tea and steeped it real Strong, poured it into a spray bottled and made my white background cream! The handles were made by stringing my fabric yo-yo's a big plastic bead, and i rose bead I got off a vintage necklace i scored at a yard sale! The decoration on top is a small doily from a dollar store, I made the lace leaf on my embroidery machine and another fabric yo-yo, topped off by a broken earring from a very large box of jewelry I bought about 8 years ago!  I filled them to the brim with all kinds of things. I found a black cat charm/bead on sale at Hobby Lobby that just opened near me, and I found some stretchy white skeletons at the local Dollar General. I placed them on the very top of the items inside the box. Sorry, I did not take a picture.

These are to fabric bags I made. I fell in love with the fabric at JoAnns  and had to find a way to use it in this swap. So I made the bags to place the boxes in! I had to use two different fonts for the initials I loved the font I used for the A it was perfectly scrolly, but unfortunately not all the letters looked like what they were suppose to be, hence I had to use another for the S. I wanted them to pop on the bag,so I first embroidered them onto black wool felt and then stitched them onto the bags. I also made the poof y poms,put a pin back on them so they could be removed.

I think this has to be my favorite(aside from my little witch) This came together so well. When I was looking for inspiration for this swap, I went to Micheals and walked around. My husband came in with me(joy) he needed to keep me on track of time, because we were going to see Avatar and did not want to miss the 4;30 showing! Anyone else out there know how hard it is to find inspiration when your hubby is following you around the craft store?lol What do you want that for?What are you doing with that, do you really NEED that?.... He was not that bad truly. Anyway... at the end of their dollar and two dollar baskets they had four are five baskets filled with ink stampers,magnets,keys stationary with these inspiring thoughts,like rest a while,discover, vision, shine . Bingo! I found my inspiration for my swap! I bought some ink stamps, some magnets with shine and a candlestick, and some keys. I loved them so much! So, I knew I had this embroidery design of a chandelier, so one thing led to another, and this is what I came up with! My partners also get some tags that I made with the stamps, a set of shine magnets, and a lovely metal key that is about five inches long, and a Chandelier crystal that is backed with a black and white damask design.

I so so love how this all came together! everything came so nice. Sure hope my swap partners enjoy these things as much as I enjoyed making them!

This is everything ready to be put into the mailing boxes!

 Our host Heather from speckledegg said that we could include Halloween type items or not. My two partners celebrate the holiday I do not. But I did give them some things for the holiday, and they were quite fun to include.