Art Joy Stuff Vintage Paper ATC Swap

This month I decided to join an ATC swap  hosted by Kimberly of ArtJoyStuff.  She hosts a different theme monthly and this time around it was Vintage Paper. I thought "that sounds pretty easy, I can handle that," and so I joined in.  Well this was NOT easy! The rules were that everything on the ATC had to be vintage. EVERYTHING! I guess I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I tried to make the card with my limited supply of vintage items.

I had a bunch of pages from an old Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book and I started with that. Then I found a beautiful piece of flocked metallic vintage wall paper. It still looked so plain! So I went to bed and started again in the morning and came up with millinery flowers and a roll of vintage seam binding. In the end it was fun and challenging to use all vintage materials.

Linking with Pink Saturday.

                  

New Grandma Baby Shower

Last week we hosted a shower for my dear friend Lorraine who is about to be a grandma for the first time. The shower was part of our monthly art group, Paper Soirée, which is held at Paper Tales. The ladies were all excited to shower Lorraine with scrapbook supplies for her new Grandma Brag Book. Each month this group hosts a swap so we continued with this tradition and swapped paper baby shoes. We all made two and traded one and we each gave one to Lorraine.  My girlfriend Pam and I made all of the decorations and my daughter Cassidy helped by folding Origami boats for party favors.  We all had so much fun and Lorraine was so surprised!

A Swap For All Seasons Valentines

This was my first month in a wonderful swap group called A Swap For All Seasons.  I love this group because you can choose to participate each month and you create a card and a tag to send to your partner. This is pretty easy and not overwhelming if I run out of time because I have overcommitted myself (yes, we ALL do this!). The group is managed by a sweet and very organized woman, Linda.

I created this stitched Valentine and tag for Debi:

And I was the lucky recipient of a beautiful package from Joyce. She is so sweet. After visiting my blog she learned that I love Marie Antoinette. She used this as her inspiration to create a card and tag for me. Visit her blog to see the beautiful pieces!

Linking with Pink Saturday.

Stitched Valentines

These are the Valentines Day cards I made for a Marie Antionette Mail Art swap.  I have been having a wonderful time mixing paper and various laces, burlap and other fabrics and stitching them all together with my sewing machine. My machine is about 25 years old and is causing me some frustration but I am continuing on none-the-less. I now really understand why they call the top and bottoms thread equalization tension because it is definitely causing me some tension!

Linking to Pink Saturday.