Handmade Gift Exchange

                                                                                                 
I participated in a Handmade Gift Exchange organized by Linda from Craftaholics anonymous. She hosts it twice a year and it is fun!!! I mean, really fun, teenage kind of fun...You apply, and she sends you your partners details. Then you write an e-mail to that person and you wait, all excited, for them to reply and you wander...who is this person, who also applied to send a gift to a total stranger, just for the fun of it.

My partner in this round is Catarina from No lugar que chamo Casa... 
Linda has some extremely cool match-making skills, because Catarina and me have so much in common. Just to name two, we both live in a foreign country, and our kids (she has 2 sons, and I am expecting my second son any day now) are almost the same age. We obviously both love the handmade too:)
Catarina sent me an e-mail yesterday saying my present is on it's way. As if it wasn't exciting enough to just know you are getting a present in your mailbox one of these days, I just found she actually posted my present on her blog, and it is amazingly cooooool, so I can't wait!

Have a look at this:

It is just tooo cute!!!! And I love, love, love the color!

I posted my little package to Catarina today, (my photos from today are useless, sorry about that.) taped with handmade tape

 

and filled with this:

 and this

Not matchy-matchy as her present. And she saw this bag, because I already blogged about it here, but I am sure she will now understand why I asked her in my first e-mail if she liked yellow. I made this bag with her in my mind and I do hope she likes it:)

You can see some of the other gifts here, I think I can safely say the present I am getting is THE BEST!

T-shirt, T-shirt, what will you become

There are many ways to repurpose a T-shirt. Some very obvious ones, like resizing or appliquéing a shirt to be more girlie, to cover-up stains, or whatever

But then, there are some intricately cool ways to repurpose a T-shirt.

                                                                                                                                                                      

You can make a hat for your kid, like Cheri from

I am Momma Hear me Roar

or like me.





















You can make accessories like BeccaG or buy them in her shop.

Orange & :Green Chevron Headband on Grey and Grey Button Up Knitted Scarf with Kandinsky-esque Button

There are numerous T-shirt necklaces on the web, just click here, you won't know what hit you. Nevertheless, the most amazing, happy, colorful and unique T-shirt necklaces are made by Maša a.k.a. Sušena žemljica. And she calls the Spaghettis!!! Just look at this

 Yes, yes..these are handmade buttons, and I like them more than diamonds. Seriously!

And now, from decorating ourselves, we can move to our home-decor. For instance, by making a pillow:

Find a tutorial here.

Or these pom-poms:

Tute here.

Or if you have around 50 T-shirts you don't know what to do with, and you are armed with incredible patience, you could do this rug:

Get the tutorial here.

I love all of these. I am most probably not making a rug, I am not a patient person AND we have a bulldog. Bulldogs shed extremely, so no rugs for us really. But you should! Let me know if you do!

Scallop bag sew-along

A little more than a month ago Kate from See Kate Saw had a birthday party for her blog. For this ocasion she gave US a present, the sweet scallops tote pattern and a tutorial.

   

 was  organized and I was one of the first ones to apply. Nevertheless, it took me untill today to do something about it. Linky is already filled up with loads of colorful totes, which you can check out here. 

And with less than 5 hours left to link up, here comes mine (it is a refashion again, what else could be expected from me).

I bought a bag for 800 Ft (3,5$) at a thrift store a while ago, and I knew this is what I wanted to use for my scallop-bag.

It was a cool, big bag

with nice inside pockets, good zipper,

So I cut it up, cut my husbands shirt up, and also one innocent thrift store belt and made this:

Front

Back

Details

And now I will go link up, because I'll be late in the end and my being awake at this hour of night will've lost its appeal.