Update on Swaps

Received a whole envelope of beautiful creations from the [Inchies-onexone] swaps earlier in the year which I have yet to show. 

July 2013 swaps
Oriental inchies: Crap from Rae Ann Ohlinger, Gold flower sticker from Lisa Cottrell, 3. Lady & fan from Debbie House, 4. Stamped Japanese cherry blossom from Polly. The folded cranes are done by me. 

Owl  inchies: 1. Blue-green owl from Rae Ann, 2. Black owl from Lisa C, 3. Stamped square owl from Debbie H, 4. Light blue owl from Polly. I did the 5th one with a small tatted flower for this exchange. 

Pink inchies: 1. Wrapped string (unsigned), 2. Quarter of flower from Lisa C, 3. Pink envelope, pen from Debbie H, 4. Pink dragonfly from Lisa C.

Inchie on a Twinchie: 1. Pink paint from Rae Ann, 2. Sunflowers from Lisa C.

Mermaid Moo (1 1/8" x 2 3/4"): 1. Mermaid with orange hair from Lisa C, 2. Blue b/g from Rae Ann.

ATC (any theme): 1. B/w flowers from Rae Ann, 2. Bird from Debbie H.

Aug 2013 swaps

Frog inchies: 1. Frog photo (unsigned), 2. Light green frog from Jamie Sander, 3. Blue frogs from Lisa C, 4. Green frog from Brooke G. I folded the last one, an origami frog. I just love to challenge myself to fold them as small as I can! 

Changing Leaves inchies: 1. Orange leaf from Debbie H, 2. Red-orange leaf from Lisa C, 3. Red, yellow leaves from Jamie Sander, 4. Green, yellow, red leaves from Rae Ann.

Inchies (Any Theme): 1. Hats from Brooke G, 2. Green flower from Debbie H, 3. Textures from Polly, 4. Ballet from Lisa C.

[ATC-ArtDolls] Mar 2014 swaps were a Clover dress and a Carousel Horse.

Mine were mailed to Cindy Whiddon (USA) while Laureta sent the following to me.

[NEEDLESnCRAFTS] A Bookmark Exchange 2014 was hosted by Zarina Zainal Anidin (Malaysia). My 2 tatted bookmarks, plus 2 tatted paperclips, went to Diane in the USA. 

Zarina did a bobbin lace and a crochet bookmarks for me, together with a batik card she made and a skein of her hand-dyed thread. 

NDP. Some Kites.

This year, I managed to get tickets to the National Day Parade, by luck!  And better luck to manage to swap 1 of the tickets just the day before, in order to get a pair in the same sector!! It was a long time since I watched the NDP live.

I haven't done inchies for a while since Apr swaps, I'm back with Jul and Aug swaps.  Guess I'm now into origami, a number of them are all folded as I challenge myself to fold them small to fit the 1-inch squares - cranes, frogs and maple leaves.  The pink inchies, mermaid Moos and robot twinchies with the robot head inchies are done with die-cuts.

Notice the minion inchies?  I watched both shows and must admit they are simple and cute. Aren't they?

I didn't stop there.  Our office had a game to decorate kites, and we came up with a minion kite!   We aren't flying them yet, but it should be fun watching our little works up in the sky.

More Swaps Received and Some Little Things The Girls Did

More swaps came in, this time from the Inchies-Onexone group.

Jan 2013 Swaps

B. Valentine's inchies from Polly (2 on the left), Katherine W (2 on the right) and Debbie House's Be Mine (bottom).

C. 2 ATCs - Valentine ATCs - pink heart from Polly and Tink-a-tude from Debbie House.

G. 2 Minature Art Cards (1.5x 2.5) on the Oriental theme from Debbie House (left) and Polly (right).

Feb 2013 Swaps

A. 4 Black & White inchies from Cheryl Russ, Polly, KW, Debbie House.

B. 4 Zentangles inchies with hearts from Debbie House, Polly, Cheryl Russ, Katherine W.

E. 4 Foreign Stamp inchies - 2 from Polly, 2 from Debbie House.

H. 2 Twinchies with an inchies (Sewing theme) - Button from Cheryl Russ, Thimble & thread from Debbie House.

Mar 2013 swaps included 

B. 4 Purrfect Inchies (Cats, Kittens) - 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

G. 4 Analogous Twinchies Spring Time theme- 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

Apr 2013 swaps 

D. 4 inchies - Pastel watercolour background with butterfly theme- 2 from Katherine W, 1 each from Polly, and Debbie House.

F. 4 inchies Stamped and Embossed-2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

H. 2 Moos (1 1/8" x 2 3/4") - Any theme: Japanese from Debbie House and Fashionable from Polly.

I. 2 Thrinchies - Any theme: Spring from Jaimie Sander, All Dressed Up from Rae Ann Ohlinger.

H. 4 ATCs - Any theme. Fashion (2 ATCs) from Polly, Birds from Debbie House, Butterflies from Rae Ann.

I'll end off this post with this recycled plastic bottle Joey did - a coin bank with a secret compartment for a little something!  Not her original idea though, but executed all by herself.

And a drawing Kristine did recently.  I think she can draw much, much better than me!

A Bit of Everything for March and April Swaps

I sent this lot to Debbie House (USA) for the Inchies-onexone March and April swaps.

March swaps included 4 Purrfect (Cat) inchies and 4 Analogous Twinchies with spring time theme.  The cats are stamped on and placed over thread ends all knotted together and wrapped over the whole inchie, while the twinchies are done with die-cut.  The following are a duplicate set of all the swaps for my own collection.

April swaps included a set of 4 inchies of pastel watercolour background with tatted butterflies, 4 inchies stamped and embossed, 2 Moos, 2 thrinchies, and 2 ATCs.  I cut and folded some flowers on 1 of the Moos and folded a pair of butterflies for the other - turned out very Japanese-looking because of the papers!

I did more of the movable ATCs after the March ATC session in Bisahn Library.  For the "Up and Away" ATC on the left in the photo below, pull the bottom string to move the balloons up the sky and pull the top string to bring the balloons down.

For the Bookmark exchange on the NEEDLESnCRAFTS group, I received 2 very lovely cross-stitched bookmarks and a tag from Margaret Wong (Malaysia). Margaret has matched the colour and theme of the  backing fabric, tassel and gift to go along with the bookmarks and tag.  Cross-stitch is something I couldn't do well, so they are extra precious to me, thank you, Margaret!

Kristine did another flower arrangement in school, this scored 86 out of 100.  I like the colour combination.

Valentine's Day Goodies

I did quite a bit for Valentine's Day this year.  It started with a Valentine-button fairy ATC swap I hosted at artisttradingcards.  Received a number of fabulous ATCs from ...

Pamela H Crosby (USA),

MaryAnn Arnold (USA),

Teresa Hoffman (USA),

Savannah LeCornu (USA),

Andrea Vaughan (UK),

Terry Owenby (USA),

Lavinia Nowosielski (USA),

and myself.

Thank you to all for participating, and all the gifts that came! They are all so colourful and playful :) Apart from Katt's ATCs which I have not received, I have sent out the swap to the rest.  

Over at SurfaceDesign, someone suggested a "Bowl of Hearts" trade.  A lovely idea!  I designed some tatted hearts with buttons. I just can't decide which was better, so they ended up all slightly different! 

So far, I have received from Jan Ziebol/USA (the 2 red hearts on the top row plus the heart card) and from Lesley Hurrell/UK (the bottom pink heart).

I tatted and sewed more hearts, but this time with a loop of  ribbon to hang the hearts for my ex-colleagues (heart from left to right, top to bottom row - for Katherine, Lay Cheng, Jeanette, Sharon and Foong San). 

For Inchies-onexone Jan and Feb swaps, I finished more hearts on inchies - origami style and zentangle style!  This set as sent to Debbie House: 

and this set for myself.  Tried my hands at Chinese painting following a book.  I love the tiny Chinese red seal I made in China. The 3 Chinese painting are done on miniature art card (1.5" by 2.5") and mounted on black ATC blank. 

The 2 squares in the centre are twinchies (2" by 2") with an inchie (1" by 1") on a sewing theme, done with die-cuts.  Do they look simple?  But it did take quite a bit of time and effort to row them out and assemble them.

I sewed a tiniest pincushion earlier.  Very cute, right!  Just nice to go into the tin, together with my shuttle and some threads. 

One last heart ATCs photo, with a quote by Robert Fulghum.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!