Craft Swap: H

You may have seen last month's Craft Swap that Sammy posted, now this month is my turn with the items that Sammy gave me.

Sammy gave me: Kids Craft Mod Roc, fabric scraps, coloured labels, grey leather style material, blue spot paper, orange honeycomb pom pom, web paper, round cork board, plastic animals, fabric rosettes, blue cord, blue chevron ribbon, gold paper clips, round box with mini pegs inside, silver clips and 2 wooden shape cut-outs.

There was a lot there!  So first I went through everything and came up with a list of ideas, some of these will definitely be tutorials later on I think, but for this post I went with 3 ideas to keep it simple.  At least I know I have a stash of items for future posts! ha ha.

First, I decided on using the round cork board and grey leather style material.  This is not quite Leather, but a synthetic lookalike version.  I thought that it would be good to make a mouse mat for my new Laptop table I got as a Christmas present.  My mouse sometimes doesn't like the wooden surface and it would give me extra space to use a mouse on the table.  As I wanted the mouse mat to sit next to my laptop, I cut off a slice of the cork board with a craft knife to make a straight side.  Then I just gave it a quick sand down so that cork bits did not go everywhere and gave it a nice straight side to push up against my laptop when in use.  I then used some HT2 glue from my stash to glue the leather like material on top and using the craft knife I cut around it, so that it was exactly the right size.  I think this came out very well and its just what I needed, so even better.

Next up, it couldn't be me at the moment without a plant, I am a bit obsessed with surrounding myself with fake and real plants.  I really wanted to use the mod roc for something other than the usual masks or bowls and so I came up with this white cacti to add to my collection.  I first made a structure out of newspaper and kept it in place using masking tape.  I then followed the instructions to add the mod roc to the structure and smoothed it down as much as possible.  I then left it to dry for a good 24 hours and gave it a quick coat of white paint from my stash on top of the already white mod roc.  I just wanted to make sure it was all covered, I did think of painting it a different colour, so maybe I will change up the colour every now and again, but for now white.  I then added it to a small pot I had been given as a gift from a friend (which is from Anthropologie) and some small stones to keep it in place and add to the look.

My last swap project is this cute animal keyring for my bin store key.  It is just one key on its own and so I keep misplacing it and so the animals were going to make the perfect keyring idea.  Sammy gave me a hedgehog, fox and rabbit plastic animal and so I chose this fox, as foxes go for the bins?!  Its the small things in my head!  Anyway, I had some eye screw & ring's from Willko which have been laying around for ages and so I decided to use one for the fox.  I simply just screwed it into the top of the plastic animal and added a bit of glue to keep it in place.  A very quick project to make your own keyrings or even a necklace if you wanted as the ring can be added to a chain.

I hope you liked the projects I made with the Craft Swap items, what would you have made?  We would love this to become something that everyone can get involved in, if you have a friend that you can do a swap with we would love to see your makes!  Tag us in your pictures @liveit.loveit.makeit on Instagram and use the #lilimicraftswap so we can see and share them with everyone. 

If you are a blogger and would like to get involved in our craft swap please get in touch via email liveit.loveit.makeit@gmail.com so we can feature them here or pair you up with another blogger. 

Don't forget to come back next week, to see who will make the next Craft Swap.

H,xxx

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Craft Swap: Sammy

Another new feature for 2016 that we are very excited about, Craft Swap!  We were wanting to find a way to inject more creative thinking around our projects and try and include more of our friends to join in the fun too.

I really enjoyed the limitations of the copper wreath project I did before Christmas, in the way that the lovely guys at Turtle Mat sent me a small selection of supplies and by adding just a few bits from my stash I made something awesome.

So we have decided to start a Live it. Love it. Make it. Craft Swap.  The idea being that two people will gather together some crafty bits and bobs from their stash, then swap them with each other. Each person will then use them to create one or more handmade items.  We will share ours and our friends stash swaps and their creations on the blog over the next few months, in the hope that it will inspire us all to use up some of those bits we have been saving and give away the stuff that others can make use of.  We are so excited to kick off this new feature and we hope you will enjoy it too!

Lets get started with the goodies that H gave to me last month.

H swapped me: a glass jar, a test tube container, some patterned paper, a sheet of glitter paper, a necklace chain, a wooden pendant, some pink wire, a heart peg, red flower stamens, a gold succulent craft kit from a copy of Mollie Makes, a plain paper note book and some small wooden scallop charms.

And here is what I made...

My first idea was to use the glass jar and the gold fabric from the magazine kit to make a scalloped collar to go around the jar to make it in to a pretty vase, then I used this simple paper flower tutorial with the paper from the notebook, the wire, staples and some glue to make a cute bunch of everlasting blooms to put in my new super cute vase. This quick simple project would make a great mothers day gift, don't you think? I kept it clean by just using the white paper, but you could also use patterned paper to create a more colourful bunch of flowers.

My second make was with the patterned paper, I used this paper folding tutorial to make some of these fun ornaments. I love these so much, I am going to make a ton more in different colours and hang them up in my conservatory roof, they will look lovely in there.

My third and final make from this swap was this necklace. I loved the wooden elements together, so I added some jump rings from my stash to attach the scallop charms to the necklace chain. Then using some metallic thread, again from my stash, I used the holes in the lager pendant (also a free gift with Mollie Makes I think) to create a simple design. I attached the last of the scallop charms to the bottom of the large pendant with a scrap of smaller chain to complete the necklace. 

So as you can see I didn't end up using all of the swap bits this time, but they have been put into my stash for other projects. 

We would love this to become something that everyone can get involved in, if you have a friend that you can do a swap with we would love to see your makes!  Tag us in your pictures @liveit.loveit.makeit on Instagram and use the #lilimicraftswap so we can see and share them with everyone. 

If you are a blogger and would like to get involved in our craft swap please get in touch via email liveit.loveit.makeit@gmail.com so we can feature them here or pair you up with another blogger. 

We hope you like this idea as much as we do and that it might encourage you to have a go, even if you just dive into your own stash and get inspired! Next month you will get to see what H made with the goodies I gave to her, so be sure to keep a look out for that one. 

Sammy & H, xxx

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