Craftaholics Anonymous Swap

This year I happened to notice that someone I follow on Twitter (I can't remember who it was now, sorry!) posted about an upcoming event called the Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange. The main idea is that you get a secret person to spoil and you make a handmade gift just for that special person and send it off to them. I only had about a day before the deadline so I jumped right in, and I'm glad I did!

Linda of Craftaholics Anonymous used Elfster to match us up. I was given the opportunity to spoil a lovely crafter in California! She hasn't received her package yet so I won't say anything more about that here.

I was able to find her Pinterest account (she posted a link to it on Elfster) so I used that to give me inspiration for her handmade gift. She had a lot of party decorations pinned, so I decided to make a "party in a box" for her gift.

I started with a cake stand, inspired by this one and others flooding the pin boards. One decorative melamine plate, one plastic sundae cup and a little Gorilla Glue and this baby is finished!

 

I used the bright colors in the plate to inspire the rest of the package, focusing on blue and orange with accents of pink, green and blue. The next thing I made was a flag banner:

I cut the flags out of my stash of scrap fabrics, added felt backing for stability and sewed a felt circle to the center of each one. I used double fold bias tape to connect the banner together and puffy paint to write "PARTY" on the flags. I figure it's both festive and gender-neutral for any occasion.

The last thing I made was a little wall plaque. My recipient said she enjoyed reading the Bible and there were a lot of crafty quote plaques in her Pinterest boards, so I made one for her:

I simply painted a plain wooden plaque from the craft store with blue paint, then added an orange border and a quote with an orange paint pen. I sprayed the whole thing with clear coat to protect it, so you're getting a bit of flash reflection going on in that photo, sorry about that!

I also included a note and some fun little extras and this morning I sent the package off! It felt strange to be making a handmade gift that had nothing to do with yarn (what would a Californian do with hand-knits in July, I ask you?), but it was really fun, too! I enjoyed thinking outside the box in order to fill a box for my special recipient, and I hope she loves it!

I've heard from my spoiler that my package is in the works and I'm excited to see it! I'll be sure to post here and show off what I get!

If you'd like to join this swap, Linda hosts one twice a year so stay tuned to Craftsaholics Anonymous (a favorite new blog of mine) to find out when the next one will start!