Five Shadows

These pretties are heading to Lenna for her Row House Swap. When I first read about the house swap, for some reason beeskeeps/beehives popped into my head. After all, a hive is a house for bees, right? I shot off a note to Lenna to ask what she thought and she replied in a general email to all participants saying, “Sharon asked, “Do the houses have to be the shape of a conventional house? For example, I’m thinking a beeskeep is a “house.” Any size or shape as long in the range of 1- 3 ½” wide and 2-5” high, including the roof are the rules, so I think that could work, Sharon!”

I know that these houses may not be what the other ladies are expecting. but I do hope they will like them as much as I enjoyed creating them! The base for the house is a chipboard Christmas tag which I painted with gesso and craft paints. Then I added torn paper to give the woven basket shape to the hive and embellished with bees and stamping.

And here is a picture of the back of two houses. I made six, so Lenna can have one. Thank you Lenna for another wonderful swap!

I was happily working along on a postcard, when I decided to fuse the front to the back and the heat from the iron caused the plastic veggie bag to shrink and the whole card curled up. I should have taken a picture of the curled up card – but I attacked it with scissors first to see if I could save it. I was really liking the card before the mishap, now it is just an oops! piece. And maybe it will give you a laugh! I cut out the plastic parts and then recovered just the fiber heart on the left with the more plastic and stitched around it again. But it still curls up too much for my liking.

I woke up to about 4 inches of snow this morning and it’s still snowing! It’s a pretty welcome to the month of February. And since this is Valentine’s month, I’ll share a little felted heart I did by hand with one felting needle. An embellishing machine is looking more attractive all the time for projects like this. I’m not sure where this little heart will end up – but it will let me know where it belongs. 

My Valentines are ready to send to Lenna for the swap.  I’m so excited! as this is the first time I’ve participated in an International swap! I’ve done local swaps over the past few years – round robins for my quilting group, bag, and tag swaps. I hope the ladies receiving my hearts will be pleased! Off they go in tomorrow’s mail! They are made of woven fabric, and embellished with beads and fibers.