My swap stuff

Normally we are supposed to post the things we get in the swap, but I tried a couple of new things for this swap, so I absolutely have to post them! Because this month's swap was a box swap, I decided to try the felted boxes from Mason Dixon Knitting. It was quite successful, especially for my first felted project and also considering that I altered the pattern to fit my needs. Here are some pics of the box I made for the swap.

The first picture shows the box before sewing the sides and the second one is the completed box before felting. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it after the felting process. It looked like a box when it was finished, complete with fairly square corners. Like I said, for a first attempt, I think it turned out pretty nice. Since this box was very small, I decided to do a box within a box, so I went to Michaels and bought this really cool wooden box. The top of the lid was lower than the sides, so it created a nice frame for whatever I wanted to put on the lid. I decided to do a mosaic pattern with letters that spell the word "create" and then some pretty mosaic tiles surrounding it to make it pretty. I painted the entire box black and then used black grout between the mosaic tiles. I placed the felted box inside the wooden box and mailed it to my swap buddy.

This was such a fun swap! I've never had so much fun making something for someone, and Nina was so sweet in her post about it. You can see a nice picture of the felted box and the mosaic box on her blog. I really should have taken pictures of the finished items before sending them off! Must remember that next time!

Anyway, my first attempt to make something out of Mason Dixon Knitting worked out well, and I can't wait to try something else! Oh, and my sister's kids saw the felted box and each of them insisted that I make one for them, so this summer I'm going to do a pencil box for Noah and one for Hannah, and then a small "treasure box" for Kohl. I'll have to adapt the pattern again, but I think I can figure out how to do it!