Donna Butcher: Technique Tag Swap!

Donna's tags for our Technique tag book swap arrived here in Florida from California last week, but she kindly said she had no problem with me waiting until after the garden variety swap was over to post them. Thank you Donna!

back of tag (L) -Front of envelope page (R)

front of tag (L) - back of envelope page (R)

front of envelope (L) Back of envelope (R) with technique tag sticking out

front of envelope with technique tag sticking out, back of tag

This one is my favorite!!

Awesome job on these tags, Donna! Instructions are placed on both the back of the Tags and the back of the envelopes that will make the pages of the Technique book -great idea! I love that you included a variety of techniques here. Thanks too, for the gift of the lovely ribbons. I will tuck them away in a box to unpack and use in my new studio. :  )))

Donna Butcher: Alpha Stamps garden variety swap

Donna from sunny California sent in 5 lovely postcards (1 for me, don't be too jealous!) and an ATC for our garden variety swap, done all in fabric. The paper images she added to the fabric base come from the 'seed catalog' and 'flower catalog' collage sheets at Alpha Stamps.

beautiful color combination

love the quote!

the bunny!!

so very nice, Donna. Great postcards!

I absolutely love this!
Look at the "creative swaps" .28 cents postage : ^  )

great ATC!

I am in awe of all the varied and wonderful postcards I am receiving for this swap. My thanks go out to you who have been able to work ahead of the deadline and send in early . . . this really helps me to manage this large swap. Thank you!! Remember, postcards/ATCs are due in my mailbox by August 28th - only a month away. Hope to see your contribution soon!!!

wrapping up: Love Gone Wild ATC Swap!!

Well! This was certainly a fun swap. Even though I only first announced this swap about 6 weeks ago, after arriving here in Florida, there were 29 sets of 4 ATCs that came in on time from around the world: Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and all over the USA too!
As promised, I have 3 prizes to award.

Prize Number 1:

Casie Metcalf of Vintage Image Madness has donated a free monthly subscription to her wonderful downloadable vintage images on her site, as a sponsor of this swap. She has also donated a free package of vintage goodies for each participant, which will be included in with your swaps. To randomly choose two of the prizes, I used the list I made of all the participants as they joined up, which was numbered  . . .

and then i used Random.org to randomly pick 2 different participants. For the Vintage Image Madness Monthly Subscription, #5 was chosen (see it in blue below) which = Barbara Roberts in Florida! Casie will be sending you all the details on your gift, Barbara : ) congratulations, great prize! 

Number 2 prize in this swap was for a collage I created, just for this swap . . .

The randomly picked second number was # 31 = Sarah Boblit from Iowa! See her number chosen in blue below. I will be sending this collage to you along with your swapped ATCs, Sarah. Congratulations!

The last prize is one that I chose myself for what I considered to be the most creative ATCs in the entire swap. The winner of this prize will receive Free registration to the next creative swap of their choice. All they have to do is email me and remind me! For this prize, I chose Donna Butcher for her very creative love letter-complete with envelope and love note ATCs! Such an awesome idea that I had never seen before.

Congratulations to Donna and thank you to all!
I have the ATCs swapped out on paper, and will work hard to get them packaged up and in the mail to you ASAP. I will be announcing another creative swap, but not until next week. I hope to see you sign up, I'm planning on hosting a 4" x 4" collage swap and still working out the final details.

Thank you for a wonderful swap with awesome participation! lenna young andrews - February 16th, 2010

ATC Swap: Love gone wild set #19: Donna Butcher, California

Donna Butcher has created ATCs with a definite creative twist that I don't think I've ever seen before. She made her ATCs into envelopes and enclosed love notes!!

This is one of those hidden benefits of hosting a swap. I think it makes any of the work worth it -seeing and holding all these great ideas and beautiful cards in my hands, and getting to share them all with you.
A closer look at Donna's way-cool idea is below - you can click on any scan for more detail.

Fabulous idea, Donna!! Thanks so much for participating! : 0  ) lenna

Alice in Wonderland ATC swap: Donna Butcher, California

Donna Butcher's ATCs were in my mailbox today - yay! Yes, it is really fun to receive all the swap art. : ) Donna had sent me an email when she mailed her ATCs to me, that said:

"I had a lot of fun with this one as I had never done any ATC's before. My Alice in Wonderland ATC's used the Alpha Stamps Tenniel's Alice and I Wonder collage sheets and the Alice Tea Party Clear Stamps.

I used the clear stamps in many ways from just stamping all or parts of them on the ATC's, to stamping them and using them on transparencies and shrink plastic. I tried lots of different things, from inks, watercolor pencils, oil sticks, embossing powders, and various other media. It was a lot of fun and experimenting as it was my first time doing ATC's. I learned a lot working on this size of project. Thanks for the challenge!

Hope your Dad is doing ok and that the test results were good news. Take care and thanks for all you do!
Donna"

Thank you Donna. You have done awesome! It is hard to believe these are your first ATCs. I love the rabbit and all the watch parts. Thanks for asking about my dad, too.

I am sorry if I forgot to mention it, but my dad was in the hospital for about a week for an infected gall bladder and heart problems related to this - because of the pain he was experiencing and the stress it put on his heart. My mom got him to the hospital just in time, it was very scary for the whole family. My dad is home again now, and when he saw his oncologist this week the test results confirmed that his liver cancer is in remission. This is just really amazing. So, there is still the gall bladder to contend with and it may have to come out (he was not a candidate for surgery at the time) but we are all very thankful and will take the future one day at a time. I appreciate so much all your thoughts, prayers & wishes for my family. I wrote a little more about this on my own blog . . . near the end of the 'studio time' post.

So, I will be with my mom & dad for the next few days - I am leaving early tomorrow and I don't think I can convince Steven to open the mail, scan & upload the swaps . . . . so please be patient until next weekend when I will be back and you will see many more ATCs for our Alpha Stamps Swap! All swaps are done in my hands a week from Tuesday - February 3, 2009.

Star Ornament Swap! Donna Butcher - California

Donna Butcher sent in 3 different types of star ornaments. She made 5 for the swap and an extra one for me -thank you! Each one includes a mitten shaped tag, which I think is so sweet -and also appropriate, now that it is getting COLD!

Click on any photo for a larger more detailed picture. Thanks for participating, Donna! I love your variety of stars.

Row House Swap: Donna Butcher ~ California

Here are Donna Butcher's Row houses. What an nice variety of houses we have! Thank you Donna for your contribution and the cool little gifts you enclosed for me.

This swap is due here in CT - by August 30th - coming up soon!

Shades of Spring/ Brown + Blue Quilties: Donna Butcher

From Donna Butcher in CA- we have received 5 lovely shades of spring quilties! Donna wrote down how & why she created each quiltie and added these notes to her package for me to send along to her swap participants. That's a great idea, and certainly makes the swap more personal. Below is one of Donna's quilties close up (click on any picture for more detail).

Thanks, Donna!. I appreciate the extra quiltie!