I recently completed my second swap of the year, participating in the May Basket swap hosted by Artsy Mama on her Year of Color blog.
My partner was the lovely Julie from Jane's Apron. I'll be sharing the wonderful May basket I received from Julie in a later post. For today, I thought I'd post pictures of the basket that I sent to Julie (she received it yesterday).
Julie has a fondness for things vintage and thrifted. Her creative re-invention of vintage sewing patterns and ephemera is simply delightful.
I drew my inspiration for my May basket from 3 main sources: Julie, my own May basket memories and the fact that I've been wanting to make some layered button & tin flowers.
The actual May basket I sent was a thread cone (very heavy chipboard, bought a bunch on eBay a while ago) covered in ruffled crepe paper. I added the ribbon handle and then filled up the cone with handcrafted flowers.
I also included a bunch of other goodies that, because of my basket choice, were packaged on their own separately. I tried to keep within the vintage/flowers/bird springtime theme. My favorite non-handcrafted item I included was the bird fruit peeler from the Asian market. You use the beak to start peeling rind fruit like oranges. Very clever and cute~and it works.
Naturally, I couldn't resist buying one for myself.
I had a lot of fun putting this May basket together, hopefully Julie will enjoy it just as much. : )
{check out more May basket swap goodness on flickr}
