Crafting Exchange

This is a post I wrote while on my holiday and I thought that I'd share it with you especially as it's the first bit of craft I've done all year. I also wanted to encourage people to give a 'gift exchange' a go because it was a really fun thing to do.

While surfing the Internet recently I found a great blog called Craftaholics Anonymous that is run by Linda who describes herself as a 'hopeless craft addict'. She was in the process of organising a handmade gift exchange for anyone who wanted to participate. Luckily for me Linda had also opened the exchange up for people in America, England, Canada and Australia so I took the opportunity to put my name down.

I then took the time to put a few items that I'd love to receive on my wish list so that whoever got me would have some idea of what I liked. The only downside to the exchange was that while it was on I was in the middle of packing the family up and moving into our brand new house so I was going to have to manage my time effectively so that I could get it all done. My time management skills didn't improve, I struggled to find a balance between packing boxes and creating a handmade gift for the lovely Sally.

So I thought I'd share with you what I made for the lovely Sally. After asking a few questions anonymously to see what Sally would like I moved on to trying to find something I could make that didn't require too much equipment. All my sewing supplies were in storage so I wanted to create something nice that didn't require me to purchase a whole heap of supplies.

I discovered that Sally loves necklaces so I decided to make her one. I sent through a few links to get a better understanding of what Sally liked, she liked the beautiful recycled necklace that I blogged about here and the instructions can be found here.  I'd suggest that you watch the video as the written instructions don't give you all the details. My sister who lives up in Townsville created a necklace for her daughter after reading my blog. She posted a picture on Facebook so I could how it had turned out. I came to the realisation that I'd need to use a larger t-shirt so I went and got a few bigger shirts.

This is the original necklace.

My sister's necklace made from a kid's t-shirt.

I planned on sending my necklace off to Sally on Friday 6th July so that she could start wearing it asap. I tried it on a few times and every time I did I felt that there was something wrong with it and I didn't want to send Sally a necklace that would be more like a choker. It wasn't until last week that I found a similar necklace but this one was a crochet string knot necklace found here and I really liked how these crochet strings sit better.



Find here via Elisabeth Andrée.

 

I took the idea of just knotting it at the end so that I'd created some length especially as Sally had told me that she liked some length to her necklaces. So after a week of playing around with it I was ready to post it. Nope didn't happen instead I packed it in a box and we moved into our new house. I knew I needed to get it posted but I was trying hard to unpack the boxes, get the kids settled and figure out were to put all our stuff. It wasn't until Sally contacted me that I realised I was so late at sending my necklace.

 

So I made a black flower using a plain and glittery polyester organza, a felt blacking and a white scrapbooking brad. I used a safety pin to attach it to the necklace. Sally then has the option of moving it or removing it and she can then create some different looks.

 

So after all those detail I'm thinking that you will want to see what the finished necklace looks like. S without further ado here it is.

 

 

My necklace and my mum's neck.

So there you have it. Not bad for my first ever gift exchange and my first necklace maybe if I was to make one again I'd buy the largest t-shirt that I could get as this would allow me to do more with it. The smaller shirts stretch but they don't stretch far enough.

 

I hope you enjoyed my post and I'll be back next week with some more things to share with you.

 

 

Megan