Arizona Retreat Swaps

I can finally share with you the details of my Spellbinders Arizona Retreat Swap.

As I'm the only British girlie on the team I wanted to go patriotic

but with a feminine twist. 

I was inspired by the wonderful Jane Dean to create bags with Union Jack flags.

I started with the fabrics which were patterned with a slant on the red, white and blue.

Cutting with pinking shears, a rectangle for my 'blue' base and strips of the 'red' and

white' to create little flags. 

I know I've not rigidly stuck to traditional flag i.e. widths of the stripes etc but the spirit is all there! 

A bit of zig-zag machining.

and more....

I then sewed tiny crocheted flowers into the middles.

Attached the flags to little canvas bags

(these are available from Pickleberry Papercrafts)

I then decided I wanted to adorn each bag with charms, (my jewellery making skills came in handy here!) 

I selected four charms that represented me and England, butterfly, teapot, cat and 'handmade with love'. Attached them with headpins to small lengths of chain.

Here are the bags lined up with the chain and charms sewn into place.

They still needed something so I ordered some little MDF hearts from eBay, covered them, painted and distressed the edges.  These were a little bigger than I anticipated so they are actually tied inside the bag as an extra surprise!

Finally I placed some goodies inside, pretty notebook, pack of London tissues,

butterfly post-it notes, little sticker box and chocolate...

although I ran out of room

so the chocolate is going to be given as a separate gift!

I really enjoyed making these for 11 very talented ladies.

Don't forget you can visit all their blogs by clicking on my blog-roll on the sidebar.

Bye for now and hope you'll be back soon.