12 Days of Christmas Swap

I'm participating again this year in my online group's annual "12 Days of Christmas" Swap. Twelve people sign up and then make 12 gifts (one per person) for the day they are assigned. We mail them out and then starting on the 13th of December we open one gift per day until Christmas. This is always a fun swap and one I look forward to every year. It's amazing the unique and diverse gifts we receive.

This year I was assigned Day 1.  Since all my gifts should be opened by now, I can reveal what I made.

These are little heart ornaments or hangings made from a base of corrugated cardboard. I lightly swiped the cardboard with modeling paste, then collaged on a piece of lace, music paper, a large snowflake and some wide gold mesh ribbon. I sewed a copy of a cute vintage image onto a piece of muslin and stamped the word believe on another piece of muslin. Once these were adhered to the hanging, I added a small ribbon flower and used pink silk ribbon for the hanger.

 They look even better all together!

Another kind of creativity

Here's a little project I worked on this past week. I saw instructions for dyeing with avocado pits in the latest Stampington Somerset Studio magazine.  We always have lots of avocados, so I wanted to give this a try.

 I thoroughly cleaned 4 pits and brought them to a boil in a saucepan. Then I simmered them for about an hour.

I placed various bits in a baking dish - muslin and canvas fabric pieces; manila tags; book pages; old ledger pages; music papers; and twill, lace and rayon ribbon strips. After straining the avocado solution, I poured it over everything in the dish and let it sit for at least an hour.

Doesn't that look luscious?

I carefully removed everything and placed them on paper towels to drain and dry.

Some of the papers laid out with varying degrees of dyed color.

Here are the remaining wet pieces - yummy variations of pink!

This is the stack all dried. The photo is a little washed out - they are a little more pink than shown. Everything except the manila tags took the dye well. I think the tags are coated so the dye didn't penetrate enough.

This was a fun experiment. Who knew that avocados would produce a pink dye! Now I want to try all kinds of things.  Not sure what I will do with these bits but they are pretty to look at!