Handmade Joy Exchange

Recently I participated in the Handmade Joy Exchange created by Anne at My Giant Strawberry. Each participant sent a handmade gift to another participant, and received something from a different person.
I received a very beautiful pair of earrings from Stina at Honeywild Loves You.

The earrings have vintage bows and peach aventurine stones. Stina also included a pretty pin and her lovely business card. I love the earrings - they will be perfect with summer colors!!

My recipient is Ishrat whose blog is called Fruitful Fusion. She lives in Saudi Arabia, loves color, and does beautiful crochet work. I myself do not crochet, so I'm very impressed with her stunning work.

In her blog, Ishrat mentioned that she loves lilies, so I made a lily-themed paper cut for her.

I started off by drawing a design on white paper, making dots with a Sharpie pen (which I knew would go through to the back) in areas that would be cut out. I put specks of glue on the back over the black dots, then glued the white paper to green card stock, which I thought would make a nice outline.

Then I did the cutting through both the white paper and the green card stock. The glued sections fell through when cut out.

I peeled off the white paper when the cutting was done.

The cut-out could have been enough as it was, but I wanted to add color.

I traced the flowers and leaves onto light yellow paper and used watercolor pencils to fill in the shapes.

Then I glued the cut-out over the yellow paper and added a ribbon. This is how it looked on my door with sunlight shining through.

I love my earrings, Stina, and hope that Ishrat is pleased with her paper cut.

Thank you, Anne for a joyful exchange!

You can visit Anne's blog to find links to all of the participants' blogs!

Have a wonderful day!