Each participant chooses 6 themes their partner can base crafts on, the partners choose ONE theme from the six and make all crafts based on that theme.  There must be at least one large, one medium and one small.

My partner’s themes were:

1. trees/leaves
2. phrenology
3. sky/clouds
4. early 70′s SNL
5. vintage children’s books/art
6. pirates

I chose trees/leaves. I considered a couple of the others, but since this is my first swap since before Christmas I figured I’d better start off easy.

I first made Teresa a tree of life suncatcher…

Then I made this cute purse (from the Buttercup Bag tutorial)…

I used interfacing on the exterior of the purse and now I think it’s my favorite pattern ever! It always comes out so perfect!

Since it’s a smaller purse I didn’t think it qualified as a large on it’s own so I added a matching checkbook cover and travel tissue pouch…

And finally to fill the required crafting I painted this tree painting…

I had too many ideas in my head so I also carved two leaf stamps…

And made these tree branch coasters…

I made myself a set of coasters too. They’re about 3/8″ thick and have a coat of polyurethane on them to make them liquid resistant.