A Charming Swap Indeed

Hi Y'all.  There are so many things to catch up on lately.  I've been doing lots of reorganizing and then going back to bed sick, then more of the organizing,  back to bed sick, so on and so forth.  But I have managed to get a few swaps in between all that.  And now I'm finally finding time to post some.


Sarah @ Gypsy Mermaid decided to have a charm swap.  I thought well that sounds easy peasy and fun too, so sign me up.  Boy was I wrong....about the easy part not the fun part.  I was going to soldier up some charms.  I went out and bought the glass slides, the soldiering tool, tape and flux.  Yep, check, I'm ready.  HA!!!  What do you have to do practice with these thing for 6 months after going to school for it.  Well after several hours for 2-3 days and a couple of burns, I was done.  DONE, do you hear me?!  Well maybe one day I'll take a class and then someone can show me what I'm doin'.  It just looked so darn easy.


One idea down and nothing new popping in my head.  Finally I decided to go with little metal disks and scrapbooking paper glued to the back.  I then added little crystals and filled with a glazing liquid.  On the back I glued a little circle of velvet scrap paper.  I also had some little wooden bunny shapes which I drilled a hole in.  Then I painted them and added polka dots and a bow.

The easy part was making the packaging.  I actually did that before I made the charms.  I made little matchbooks out of card stock.  The outside was covered with decorative paper, the inside was covered in a thin cheesecloth like muslin and I unraveled the edges.  I stamped the outside and inside.  Stapled the bottom, added a touch of ribbon  and punched holes at the top for more ribbon to hang the charms.  Added my little cards and was done.  At least that plan worked.

Sarah made cute birds with the alphabet to coordinate with a list of who made which charms.  That was a smart idea and cute.  Then she sewed little bags tied with ribbon to hold them all.


Thanks Sarah for hosting such a fun Swap and making me work my brain.

Not only did we get one of each charms but we also had a special swap partner that we made fabric hearts with to swap.  Jodie @ Everything Vintage, who is so creative, was my swap partner. And she sent me the most beautiful heart.  Isn't the heart she made above just swoony gorgeous!!!  I love it and am so proud to call it mine.  Thank you Jodie for taking so much time to make such a beautiful heart.

The heart above is the one that I made for Jodie.  I really hope she liked it.  It can't compare to hers.

Thanks to all the wonderful girls who made this so much fun.  I love all the charms and all the individualism.