12 Days of Christmas Swap: Day One

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I hosted a gift swap for Christmas. I divided the participants into 2 groups. Group #1: Components/ Beads and Group #2: General Gifts. We started yesterday opening our gifts, and you'll probably run into a few bloggers who are chronicling their gifts day by day! Since I've been out of town for the holidays, I am starting in a day late.  But no worries, I promise to catch you all up to date in no time!!

First off, I want to share what I sent off to the participants. My gifts were opened on day one, Dec. 25th.

For Group #1, I sent everyone a sweet set of Tin Snippet bead caps! I had fun creating these caps and then packaging them up so they would look extra cute.

 Here are the 11 little sets of bead caps all ready to go....

 To package them, I stamped  some manila labels with my custom stamp, and removed all of the strings from the tags, adding some pretty gauze ribbon in red.

Then I cut small lengths of waxed linen cording in coordinating spruce green, tied a knot, and pulled the thread through, strung on 10 be caps, thread the other end through that hole and knotted it at the back of the card.

 Here is everyone's sets all ready to go! Next I was stumped. How do I package them in a cute way so that the recipient has a pretty package to open up on Christmas day?

I used kraft paper blank greeting cards, and taped the 3 edges with some pretty Washi tape. Then added stickers monogramming each one for each recipient! PERFECTO!

Group Two: General

For this group I decided to bake up something yummy for the giftees. I found a great recipe for some spiced nuts and made a huge batch.

Off to the Natural Food store, I went- where  I found bulk nuts.... Cashews....

Pecans...... and....

Almonds! All un-salted and naked.







I found some awesome canning jars at Hobby Lobby and poured the baked and spiced nuts into each jar.

  

To jazz up the jars, I decided to alter the tops. Since they were canning jars,  could add a bit of flair underneath the screw lid, so I cut out some scrapbook paper with some cool text. I traced the lid on the underside of the paper and cut out the circles. They fit perfect under the screw top and were visible at the top.

 

Next, to add a bit of pretty to an otherwise very masculine and steampunk looking gift, I bought these pretty plastic flowers to add to each of the jars.

I just trimmed little sections of the flowers and tied them around the jar with some hemp cording.

Just so that each person would know exactly what this foodie gift was, I printed on Kraft brown tags the ingredients of each jar with a personal Christmas message at the bottom.

They just seemed too pretty to wrap so I left them as is.

I hope everyone enjoyed my gifts for the swap!! I can't wait to show you what today (Day #2) brought me! Check back soon!