Card Candy Swap!

On World Card Making Day my wonderful, crafty friends hosted a Card Candy Swap. Have you heard of this? No? Me either! It's a great idea ... you make some embellishments (typically coordinating), package them up all nice and pretty, and then swap them with your friends. It's like going shopping, only you don't need to bring your wallet!
 

Let's start with the basics. For each set of Card Candy I made four embellishments:

1. vintage bottle cap (found at a flea market for only 10 cents each!!)
2. small felt bow (MFT Beautiful Bows die)
3. Phone dial layered with various materials
4. large felt bow

Each element I varied slightly, but tried to stay within the same basic color/pattern scheme. The bottle caps are backed with punched circles and/or PTI Sketched Stars die. The circles are punched out of 2 double sided pieces of paper so I had four different patterns to play with.

The felt bows have different colors for the three main parts (loops, band, tails). And the phone dials are all cut from a piece of patterned paper (Pebbles, From Me to You) and layered with different elements, like embossed vellum, cork, stars, fancy brads. 

   

 It was pretty late at night (because of course I was doing this at the last possible minute) but I was awake enough to get really excited about how they were turning out! They looked so neat together : )

Now, they need to get all packaged up.


  
I used some patterned papers for the base and/or the strip running down the middle. Here is where the sketch for the current Fusion Challenge comes into play, only the sentiment is on top:

The flap on top of the Card Candy uses the Pretty Pink Posh Stitched Borders die to finish the edge. Old alphabet letter stamps spell out "CARDcandy" and are embossed in white. The Tim Holtz tiny attacher works perfectly to close the flap.

Here they all are! My husband's comic book mylar bags ended up working well to package the candy. So what exactly do you do with it?!

The point is that you could take a basic card base, stamp a sentiment on it, and then add bits of your Card Candy to get a finished card. 

This one may be a bit plain, but hopefully you get the idea.

Here are some pics from the party ... it's so fun when it's time to gather around the table and see what everyone brought!

We all take turns explaining what we brought, how we made it, what you could use it for, tips we learned, etc. Maggie made these awesome hat pin embellishments. She starts with a boutonniere pin that already has a pearl on the end, adds some glossy accents to the shaft of the pin, and slides the beads on. It's amazing that they are held on the pin that way! We always learn a ton of things at these parties!

Then it's time to go down the line picking out one package from each lady's pile. The pretty, bright flowers on the right were made by the hostess's 9 year-old daughter. She's adorable!

Our co-hostess even organized a Halloween card make-n-take for us! She's amazing. She had just finished making 150 wedding invitations on her Silhouette with a crazy amount of scrolling detail that must have taken ages to pick out the pieces. Whenever you think you're the craziest one spending all this time and money on your crafting passion, it's nice knowing there's someone who's just a little bit crazier than you!

I'm linking this to the Winnie & Walter contest link-up for what I did on WCMD. Don't forget to enter your photo for a chance at an awesome prize, or any one of these other AMAZING prizes:

• Craftie Challenge = $25.00 gift card to Simon Says Stamp
• On Trend with Lea = $25.00 gift card to Mama Elephant
• Pinspiration with Vanessa = $25.00 gift card to Ellen Hutson 
• Colour Combo with Gayatri = $25.00 gift card to Pretty Pink Posh
• Sketched with Julie = $25.00 gift card to Studio Calico
• Unexpected Stamping with Kelly = a seat in the upcoming class from Online Card Classes (many thanks to Online Card Classes + Jennifer McGuire for this prize)
• Pattern Play with Shay = $25.00 gift card to Wplus9 Design Studio, LLC
• Grand Prize (when you enter 3 different challenges with 3 separate entries you are added to the pool for this) = $50.00 gift card to w&w store + a seat in the upcoming class from Online Card Classes (many thanks to Online Card Classes + Jennifer McGuire for this prize)
• And all comments from the WCMD posts (mentioned above) on the w&w blog are entered into another giveaway!
• Our October Leading Lady, Jennifer Ingle is also having a giveaway on her blog.

Hope you all had a wonderful World Card Making Day! Thanks so much for looking!
-Kelly