In the mood for crafts & swaps with template and challenge for you!

Hello my dear readers,

today I have to admit that I already got into the mood for Christmas swaps and crafts. How about you? Do you think that I start to early? Well seeing that we skip Halloween and Thanksgiving here in Germany Christmas is the next upcoming holiday here an it's only 9 weeks away, which is not far when you like to craft a lot for it.
I made these skates in January 2006 and also posted them here on my blog at the time:






Now on Thursday I bought a German Magazine called Living & More and found almost the same paper skates in it, see my following scan (should enlarge when you click on it):



Well I think it's kind of spooky how much they resemble the skates I made 2 years ago, even in the color/pattern mix. Can it be that they saw my skates and got inspired? Anyway I felt challenged to create a new pair using the template they provided:






But this time I used totally different materials like Vintage sheet music, a silhouette picture from my daughter when she was still 3 years old, pompom fringes, German Dresden foil borders, velvet flowers from Cerri, rhinestone jewelry from the flea market, bonjour satin boarder from Andrea, a fabric yoyo from Anita, a pink metall bell, ricrac boarder and so on.

I like better that I made them two sided this time so that they can hang from a branch or a bird cage in my case and look good from both sides:

They came out totally different I think but pretty nonetheless, or what do you think?

I had so much fun embellishing them:

Now I'd like to challenge you to make your own pair of skates too! If you'd like to play along, here is the template from the magazine. Please show them on your blog with a link to this post and let me know under this post when you have finished a pair, can't wait to see your ideas!

I also did a well kind of Christmas swap already with my flickr friend Sylvie from Babaprincesse and she spoiled me with 3 fabulous fabric Christmas stockings from her own design which I love (cklick on the photos to enlarge them and see more details):

She also made me a mini fabric bunting garland, so sweet:

Thank you dear Sylvie it was a pleasure to swap with you again!

What else did I craft in the last two weeks? Well my daughter once bought a box of simple cardboard drawers from IKEA for 3 Euros, they were blue, so I painted them white inside and out before altering them with wallpapers and tea stained "Toile de Jouy" papers that I got send in our last swap from my sweet friend Madai over at Wren Cottage. I also used some silver German Dresden foil boarders:

Of course I'll use them for storage in my studio.

Further I finished some soldered jewelry pendants. For the next one I had to use the scan of my daughters silhouette again, inspired by Andreas new Logo of Onehundred wishes. A silhouette artist from our Medieval Christmas market in Bremen created this silhouette from Roxanne when she was almost 4 years old:

The next two sided belveded glass pendant has a Dresden silver foil bird on one side:

and the Eiffel tower on the other side (Eiffel tower sticker is from a swap with my dutch friend LiLi M) I just doodled a bit around the sticker:

This one is for the swap with Sylvie, the little girl is a scan from a vintage photo card I bought from our Bremen flea market last year:

And I also finished off some pendants from a collage I created some weeks ago:

"Good things happen when you go for it" is a saying I used in one of the pendants and I'll try to make this my new motto!

I guess that's all for now, or no wait, there is one more thing! If there is anyone out there in the US/Canadian blogland who'd be interested in a special private swap with me, that would be fab! I have to give the latest issue of a German Crafts and Living magazine, as well as a German Country Living magazine and one of my soldered pendants of your choice and would wish so much for the new Somerset publication of "Where women create" which I read, should be on your newsstands on November 1st. If you are interested please let me know here or email me.

Have a great Sunday and new week evereyone!

Hugs xox Carola