Christmas Decoration Swap

I was delighted this year to join in with the Christmas Decoration swap organised by Marianne at Ladybird Diaries. I was paired with Jessie's Needle and we both made contact to arrange our swap. I was also delighted that Jessie's Needle offered her help and expertise with any crochet queries as I was just getting back into crochet again and my first attempts were seriously wonky.

I am trying to do some catch up posts as lots of things have got in the way recently and I have a backlog to share. I'm sure Jessie's Needle won't mind me sharing this as I know she has got my package and sent me a lovely thank you note. We were later in doing our swaps but were both happy to live with the delay. I know she has sent mine but I've been having dreadful problems with delayed mail here so will blog again once it arrives.

I loved doing the decoration and spent ages deciding what to do. I scanned Jessie's Needle blog to see if I could pick up some colour cues but couldn't spot any common themes. I would have liked to do something crocheted or knitted but my skills were not up to speed and I was too shy to send a wonky item. I can cope with some degree of sub-perfection within a  handmade item but too much pushes me over the edge. So I decided to go with jewellery making as it is full of sparkle, has endless colour combinations and I had bought some snowflake wire forms that I'd bought in a lovely bead shop in Perth at least two years ago that I had never tried.

As always, no endeavour should be unsupervised by at least one of the fur overlords

Many colour, texture, finish and size combinations must be explored till most of the dining table disappears 

 Eventually I found a pattern I was happy with which included elements I liked. The wire forms were a nightmare as they were so difficult to loop at the end and my first attempt was less than ideal, but I got there. This design is a mixture of faceted and coated rondelles and miyuki seed beads. The dangle is a blown glass puffy heart with a little chainmaille link. The tartan ribbon is a little nod to its Scottish provenance but mainly because it matched all the colours and seemed to peek out of my ribbon box.

 I found it hard to photograph the decorations when they were lying flat so I hung them on my little Yankee Candle Tart warmer.  

 I enjoyed doing the crystal snowflake but as my sewing machine had arrived (more of this later in a catch up post later) I wanted to try something machine sewn and personalised. I tried a heart but going round corners and machine sewing was just NOT happening. So I went with a mainly straight line simple embellished tree. Please ignore the wonky stitch on the right, it definitely didn't look that bad as I recall, so I'm saying it is all down to the Lavender filling.

 Hanging instead of just propped.  

 As I was in the 'zone' I decided to try another little lavender bag with some nice Christmas fabric and a matching ribbon. On the top left you can also see Magic's haunch as she was sitting with her back to me doing huffy snoopervising. 

 One of the trio with a snowflake punched card.

 I even decided to put a snowflake and little jewel on the envelope.

I had a ball making these and was delighted that Jessie's Needle liked them. I hope that we can keep in touch as she seems like a very nice person and I hope she has a lovely, happy and prosperous Christmas. I will definitely be joining in again next year if this is running again.