Happy St. Patrick's Day and Swaps!

Top O' the Mornin To You

dear friends. This beautiful little image is courtesy of this lovely lady, Lulu at home on Flickr. One visit to her phototstream and you'll be hooked. She has great images and a huge collection of children's books.

I participated in the Winning Hand swap hosted by the Sweet Goodness girls. In preparing our swap items, we had to include one vintage item, one handcrafted item and a sweet treat. The color scheme was black, white and red and you had to work a diamond, club, heart and spade into your swap goodies. I signed up for this swap because I had been in the summer swap last year and it was a lot of fun. This swap was fun, too, but much more of a challenge. These are the things I sent to my partner...

An altered composition book using vintage Russian playing card images, a diamond patterned Cuttlebug embossed square, some buttons and a monogram.A garden "spade" decorated with more images (see how I stretched here?)A jar filled with vintage buttons, decorated with a multi-layered flower cut from a dress pattern with a "diamond" brad in the center. The label is a copy of a vintage apothecary label and you can have this image if you click on my Flickr link and visit my photostream. I included one of my little matchbook notepads (which you can see in the group shot) and this Special Dates perpetual calendar.Isn't the cover paper wild? To round out the package I included a vintage handkerchief with a crocheted edging and the sweets........this was easy! Andrea and I both love dark chocolate and licorice so I sent her some of both. The tags on the wrapped packages (which I forgot to photograph) were "hearts".

My gifts from Andrea included these 4 pot holders knitted using the four suit designs. They are nice and heavy and the opposite side of each pot holder is the reverse color scheme. Very clever and useful.

Isn't this candy dish beautiful? It is the vintage piece and I love the size of it. I know I'll get a lot of use from it.

Sweets? Fours different flavors of licorice. The traditional black and red and then there is green apple and watermelon. The company is in Minnesota so I think Andrea had a direct link. An adventure for my taste buds!

Thank you Andrea! You made this swap fun and I enjoyed being your partner.

Now on to the next swap......I'll have a sneak peek later today. I can't show too much because Kana, my talented and nice partner, checks in on me from time to time.....