Altered Tin Swap

My secret sister, Joy, received the altered tin I made for her, and she likes it so I’m very happy! I don’t know about you, but I always worry that what I create for someone will be good enough, or their style, or…or…or!

And I’ve received an altered tin (and more!) from my own secret sister too. My secret sister is my friend, Lani, and she was apparently having some of those same doubting thoughts that I was, which just made me giggle. I guess we all do it to a certain extent. It was so cute to read in her card to me (and she also gave me permission to say this heehee!) “Girl, you know how much I love you, and have to know how super excited and scared I was when I got your name, you are on an inspiration to me! And yes, you can say princess said it…I tried my best girlfriend…”

Well, princess, you did an awesome job! I love the alcohol inked tin which was filled with lace. Since I’ve been working with fabric, needles and pins lately, I think I’ll keep my needles in it. And I really got spoiled and received an altered box too! And it’s ivory colored…with buttons and bling and glitter, and filled with more things that I love. As I've said before...I'm a sucker for ivory colored things and it's going to look lovely sitting in my scrapbook room! I think it will sit on my table and hold little bits and pieces of lace to use on my projects.

Here’s a picture of the altered tin and box that Lani made for me…












along with some of the goodies she sent. Oops…I included a picture of the popcorn – that wasn’t for the tin swap…that was a bingo prize. And as you can see from the half-ful bag…I loved that too…but I did have a little help with it.


















Notice the little package of “Princess Posies”pictured on the right? It’s a package of blue organza type flower shapes, and I’ve never noticed those before in the scrapbooking world. I always cut my own from fabric either freehand or using my diecut machine.

If you haven’t made a heated flower before, here’s how. Just take a few layers of flower shaped, thin fabric – think organza – any thin polyster type fabric. I like to use at least six layers – and I also like to vary the size going from large at the bottom to smaller at the top. These Princess Posies came with two different sizes.

Stack them together like this -- I like to alternate the pedal shapes...

















Put a brad into the center –the Princess Posies already had holes in the center. And don’t use a rhinestone brad or it will melt. Or, you can keep the pieces together by attaching a small safety pin to the back.











Put the flower onto a heat-safe surface (I use my craft mat) and then I hold it down with something (I usually grab my scissors) so that when you heat the flower, it doesn’t take off on you. I give the top of the flower a quick heat shot using my heat gun….we’re talking really quick! and you’ll also want to move the heat gun around a bit to get all sides.
















Then, still holding the flower down with my scissors, I take the heat gun to the side of the flower to get to the lower flowers without reheating the top flowers I just heated. When I heat from the side, then the flower will usually spin a bit which is great because all sides get heated. I will then just take a quick shot of heat to wherever I feel it needs to be more flower shaped.

And the final results --- I added a prima bling center to it…
Thanks Lani!