Recent Swaps

I am participating in a few swaps this month. One is "Sew Beautiful" ATCs and the other is "Snippet Rolls." I started working on both projects while I was at my friend's house for an art retreat last weekend and finished them up last week.

For the ATC swap, we are supposed to make two fabric, lace, stitched ATCs and send them off to our two partners.  These are the two I created in similar fashion. I layered fabric, laces and ribbon over a card stock base and machine stitched. The photos are printed on sticky-backed inkjet-printable fabric. I then hand-stitched buttons and pearls on.

This is an additional piece that we are incorporating in our group this year. We are calling it "Hitchhiker Art." One person starts a small piece of art and includes it in their next swap mailing. That recipient finishes off the piece and send it on to the next person they are mailing a swap to. That third person gets to keep it.

This tag's background was started by Roxanne and sent to me last month in a swap. It is very grungy with many textures of copper, silver and a blueish metallic. I completed it by adding a butterfly and quote stamped on a Distress Oxide background and a few strips of washi tape. I added clear Wink of Stella to both the butterfly and the words and then Glossy Accents to the black markings of the butterfly. I added a messy "nest" of copper metallic thread behind the butterfly and a pen nib for its body. I sent it on to the final recipient who is also receiving the second ATC above. I hope she likes it!

This is the snippet roll I created. (If you don't know what that is, google it or check all the You Tube videos showing beautiful rolls. It is basically a base fabric or ribbon covered with bits and pieces - snippets - of lace, fabric, ribbons and lots of embellishments such as charms, buttons, beads etc.) This is about 24" long and 2" wide. I used a vintage floral drapery fabric as the base and went to town adding lots of bits. This is a great project to use up some of the tiny pieces we hoarders save! It was hard to get the entire piece in the photo but, hopefully, you can get an idea of what this looks like.

These snippet rolls can be rolled around a ribbon spool or a wooden thread spool or hung with a ribbon. Or you can leave it as is and cut it up to use in other projects.  I did not have an appropriate-sized wooden spool but I did have a heavy cardboard tube from a spool of metallic thread that was perfect. I covered it with vintage music paper and then glued on a "tab" of scrap fabric and pinned the end of the snippet roll to it. This was it isn't permanently attached in case the recipient doesn't want to keep it rolled this way. I threaded pink seam binding ribbon through the tube, rolled up the snippet and tied the ribbon in a pretty bow to keep it intact.

I can't wait to receive my ATCs and snippet roll in return. It's fun to see how other people interpret the theme and to receive other artists' work.