Easter Swap

I joined an Easter egg crafting swap this year!  A friend did it last year and it looked like so much fun!  Julie at This Cozy Life organizes it each year.  Everyone makes ten wool eggs and one other small gift.  There are 11 people in your group.  Once you've completed your ten crafts, you mail one to each of the other ten in your group.  Easy enough, right?!

As soon as I sent the email asking to join, I wondered what the heck I got myself into.  I am not an experienced crafter.  I think I hold my own when it comes to creating things for my own kids, but some of the other women doing this swap do it for real (they have Etsy shops and websites).  However, you never learn anything if you don't put yourself out there, try, and see what happens.  I'm a little intimidated thinking about the quality of what I made vs. some of the gifts we may get in return, but we will see.

Being relatively new to Waldorf and wool crafting, I thought making needle felted eggs would be easiest for me.  I'm not very familiar with wet felting and I'm not much of a knitter (yet).  They were fun to make, but I completely under estimated how much time it would take me, mostly due to my inexperience - hence why I haven't blogged as much lately.  Regardless, our eggs are finished and finally ready to go in the mail four days late.  One of the women in our group lives in Germany, so her package went out on time (and this is why only nine eggs are pictured).  Hopefully it will arrive by Easter!   

For our other small gift, I made homemade beeswax crayons.  They aren't the best for coloring, but are excellent for making bark and other rubbings.  Hopefully the other families will enjoy them also!

Basket full of wool eggs!

 

I love spring/Easter colors.

 

 

Some day I will learn how to take better pictures or get the camera needed to take better pictures - I think it's more of an operator problem than equipment.  I could not get my camera to focus on this little cutie.  I was so proud of my needle felted duck.  I might have to make two more for Mannchen and Töchterchen.

Another favorite - vines, leaves, and flowers.  This one took HOURS.  Yes, I am that slow.

Closer view of a few others. 



So, again, why did I choose needle felting if it took so long?  Because once, a month or two ago, I made these wool felt coasters.  Clearly if I could do these, I could handle making wool eggs with teeny tiny pretty details on.  Oops.  I learned there's a big difference! 

 

Truth be told, the eggs took much longer than I ever imagined, but I had a lot of fun making them and learned something new!  I would love to make a few more for my own kids, but time will tell.  I have a large pile of quilting to tend to and another pile of scraps for making fabric eggs.  Guess this mama better get back to the sewing machine!

In other news, look what came in the mail yesterday!!!!  Spring is upon us!  I will write a gardening post soon!