Thursday, 6 December 2012

Christmas Cracker Swap!!

A few weeks ago I signed up for the Christmas Cracker Swap organized by the wonderful Tracy at Mad About Bags

A lovely little idea for a swap where you fill a kitchen roll tube with teeny tiny wonderful things and then wrap the tube in fabric, and tie with ribbons! (giving your partner a fresh new piece of fabric for their stash and two new fab lengths of ribbon!)

I was paired with Tracy herself and set about filling my cracker (kitchen roll tube) to send her!

Here goes..... 4 squares of fabric, 2 cards of vintage buttons, 8 little Christmas tree buttons, 6 small wooden buttons, a wooden reindeer peg, a copper charm, 6 tiny red bells, 3 books of seed sticks, some puffy red stars, gold and silver Christmas brads, a little magnetic bendy man, 4 red and white Christmas shapes, a charades game dice, 2 handmade decorations, a tiny cross stitch and a handmade pair of earrings!
All I'm missing is the partridge in a pear tree!

I had great fun playing 'Cracker Tetris' fitting in all the little bits!

I wrapped my cracker in some dotty blue fabric with blue dotty ribbons as these matched the knitted mug warmer I sent her (wrapped around the cracker as it wouldn't fit inside! My Tetris skills aren't that good!!)

The handmade items I sent included a teeny tiny felt gingerbread man (we have many on our tree!)
A little winter lady in a festive felt cape
A pair of earrings with red bows and keys
And a teeny weeny little Christmas Tree cross stitch which I had wanted to fix a small magnet to the back of but for the life of me could not find one anywhere!



 I was so excited when Tracy's cracker for me arrived!

It was wrapped in the cutest Christmassy fabric and tied up with Merry Christmas ribbon!

Inside I found lots of lovely little things!

3 candy canes decorations for the tree (we have a gingerbread and candy cane theme for our Christmas Tree!)
 Some very useful little 'handmade by' charms
 Some yummy little chocs (yes, one is missing from the picture, it fell into my mouth while I was taking photos!)
 Some wonderful crafting bits, gold and silver pens and Christmassy peel offs, beautiful flowery wooden buttons and dotty blue ribbon (which I'd just run out of!!)
The cutest little duck egg blue heart (our other Christmas tree theme) with bees on (I have a thing for bees!!)
 And last but by no means least my favourite thing of all (and possibly my favourite thing in the house at the moment!!) An absolutely gorgeous little sewing with tiny honeycomb hexies and perfect little bee embroidery! and Tracy even embroidered 'Busy Bea' on it! Which is co-incidentally the name of my (as yet empty) Etsy shop and my (as yet not fully launched) face-painting venture! That and it's something I'm always being called!
 I am in love with it, and am going to make a shrine to it in my craft room!

So that was the tale of the cracker swap! Good fun was had by all!

Thank you Tracy, not only for organizing such a brilliant swap but for all the wonderful goodies you bestowed upon me!!!