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!


Comments

  1. Thank you so much for my tin snippets, I am so excited to use them in a creation. Thank you again for creating this event. I will be updating my blog when my company leaves later today. Those jars with the different nuts look delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  2. How lovely. Thank you especially for describing your thought-process about packaging designs, I really like the way you have done these!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful gifts! I bet they were all thrilled to get them!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you Lorelei for the yummy nuts, they are very good.
    Therese

    ReplyDelete
  5. Those snippets are so darling. I'm so jealous! Those candied nuts look yummy too! I thought about singing up for this party, but opted not to since I had already made several other large committments. I can't wait to see what's next.

    ReplyDelete
  6. They look soooo awesome Lorelei!
    Happy Holidays!

    ReplyDelete
  7. These nuts are awesome Miss Lorelei! Thank you! I am a bit late to the party having unplugged for Christmas and I have to work the next two days, but I will be par-tay-ing by the weekend and get caught up. In the meantime I am going to try to resist peeking at the presents on blogs until I can get caught up! Thanks for including me! This was lots of fun! Enjoy the day. Erin

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow! - I JUST got home late last night. I can't wait to catch up with you guys!

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I LOVE the tin snippets that you sent me-really well made and a gorgeous pattern! I can't wait to create with these-they are perfect for a Spring design.

    The spiced nuts sound and look fantastic too! What a wonderful idea.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lorelei everything looks so Winter Wonderful! Too bad I wasn't on the receiving side! :) hehehe!!! You inspired me for next year. Merci beaucoup!!! XO

    ReplyDelete
  12. The nuts were so delicious, thank you so much Lorelei! My husband enjoyed them with me. I so appreciate that you sent the list of ingredients! I loved the way you packaged them as well.
    Thank you! Gina H.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'm sorry to have to turn on the word verification here, but I got fed up with spammers comments!

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Buddha