Party Favors

I had a great time putting together the party favors for my big 4-0.

Above is a photo of goodies that were included in each little box: stickers, temporary tattoos, a few plastic beads, a mango scented candle, plastic drink critters (for use at parties - each person gets a different critter to help remember who's glass is who's), a God's eye, a mini loaf of lemon poppy seed bread, a beaded bracelet (swarovski bicone crystals beaded on elastic thread), an assortment of 2"x2" washi chiyogami papers, a paper crane and a two sided pendant. Not pictured: a glow in the dark skeleton key ring and a dark chocolate truffle ... that I really should have known better than to send - I received word that at least three melted somewhere in transit ... ick. Hopefully they didn't cause toooooo much of a gooey mess!

Not too long ago I made a beaded God's eye that wasn't quite so simple and was more time consuming than I had anticipated. For the party favors, I decided to get back to basics. I used little skewers and 100% cotton embroidery thread. Making them brought back a lot of good memories and were quite relaxing to do. Here's the complete set that I made (only 5 were actually shipped out; I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to embellish the remaining five ... time will tell).

I also wanted to make name tags for my guests, so wrote their blog names (with the exception of e.beck's - couldn't resist gettin "groovy" on hers) on a 4x4 piece of Bristol Board and doodled all around their names with my handy dandy fine point Sharpie (a favorite past time, dontcha know). Once the doodles were done, I decided that it would be cool to add a lil sumpin, sumpin ... I stitched over their names with embroidery thread. I think it added a cool little element:

Finally, I had so much fun making my first set of charms for the Black and White Charm swap that I wanted to try my hand at another charm type thing. I decided that a pendant would be good. Each pendant is two sided. The image on one side is a Sharpie sketch that I had done of Audrey Hepburn's eyes and the other side is the first Mandala I painted:

If you are interested in the steps, it was pretty simple. The squares are pieces of craft wood that I cut to size and sanded the edges smooth (slightly rounding the corners). Next I painted both sides with Mars Black acrylic paint. I attached my miniature artwork (just printed on 60 lb high gloss paper) with Modge Podge (believe it or not) and then applied about three coats of high gloss varnish. Once the varnish dried, I poked holes through the wood (with a needle), added the jump ring and strung it on the black cord. Viola! Simple and yet effective. :)