Swaps swaps and more swaps!!

Well I promised to share piccies of the swaps I made for Convention with you, so here they are in full, glorious technicolour! All of the supplies used are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise indicated.

First up the general swaps I made to exchange with my fellow demos from the UK, France and Germany, As usual I had left everything until the last minute so mine were of necessity fairly simple.

I made 100 of these little dove cards - 4x4 of basic black cardstock, the "Peace on Earth" stamp from the Four the Holidays stamp set stamped in Versamark then heat embossed with silver embossing powder. The dove was punched out of whisper white card with the 2 step Bird punch, and the branch out of old olive before assmbling the card using a dimensional to raise the wing and one of the tiny rhinestones from the new Jewels pack for his eye.

Then I also made 50 of these Christmas cones while I was at a craft fair the other weekend - thanks to the lovely Kim Fee who gave me the idea at our training session the other week - these were the first swaps to go funnily enough.....

They were half of a 6x6 piece of Jolly Holiday patterned paper rolled into a cone, a few inches of 5/8 Satin ribbon scrunched onto a 3" length of Sticky Strop with a hanger made out of  a piece of card punched with the word window and gold cord/ linen thread attached with a brad. The little dangly bit was made using one of the Stamps from the gorgeous Winter Post set (stamped twice in different colours and the centre of one cut out and mounted on dimensionals) and attached to the ribbon with a wee gold safety pin (non SU).

Now for the "Card Candy" swap.

"What is card candy?" I can hear you asking - well its basically where we make little 3D embellishments to use on cards, and then package them up like you would find in shops.... the challenge is to make a minimum of 6 pieces of candy which must have at least 2 layers using one stamp set - I chose to use the fabulous Winter Post set again and my swappees can choose to use the topper decoration as a 7th piece of candy if they want! I did end up using Season of Joy for one piece and the topper decoration though (Season of Joy is one of the sets which is bundled up with the offer mentioned a couple of posts below - check it out to see if you can get some scrummy free ribbon!)

The gift item swap was one where we were challenged to make something a bit more complex - the sort of item you would buy at a craft fair. I decided to make everyone one of these gorgeous little card cabinets which I found on a US Demo's (Becky Roberts)  blog. This pic is of the prototype I made for myself using whisper white and real red cardstock but the girls ones were made out of Crumb Cake card with Greenhouse Gala papers for the "drawer" fronts and on the cards and matching pens they got. Unfortuantely - I forgot to take photos of the actual items - but people seemed to like the end result!
 I intend to use mine to store all my adhesives/ bone folder/ craft knives in as the bottom section is staged to lift the back compartment up so its easy to see the contents!

The 3D swap also came from Becky it was one of the items in her fabulous 12 days of Christmas 2010 tutorial. Its a little sweetie holder containing 3 Ferrero Rocher chocolates made out of old olive card and the jolly holiday papers and you may notice my signature item - the puched out doodad from Winter Post features again (I just LOVE that new designer label punch!)

The final swap I signed up for was the business tools one - and I got some fabulous ideas from the others in the group. This was my offering - a "Party in a Bag!"
This is something you can you use when you have a potential hostess who is worrying about how much preparation is involved in having a party. If you hand her a bag with everything she needs for the food and drink she might be pushed into booking. My bags (non SU) were stamped using the So Swirly jumbo wheel and a printed logo label. They contained a bagalope containing tea and coffee bags, a box of brownie mix and in real life the envelope would contain invitations for the hostess to send out. I would also put a catalogue and hostess leaflet in the bag as well. This is a great way to get some product into a potential hostesses hands (I used some of my recently retired supplies to make the contents). As the swing tag says - all your hostess has to do is "Just add Friends!". You can of course put whatever you like into the bags - a bottle of wine and a pack of nibbles might be more appropriate for your hostesses!!

So you can see why I was rather tied up last week - just at the moment I never want to touch another piece of cardstock for a VERY long time ("as if!" - snorts a hubby reading this over my shoulder!)

While its lovely to get lots of swaps back in return - its does mean a lot of hard work - and I am stating here and now that I am not doing anything other than the general swaps next year - I can do without all the stress and angst!

I'll be back shortly with the last swap the CMC or "Convention Memory Card" one which was organised by one of the German Demos......