Here are a couple items that I have made for various swaps. Hope you enjoy them!

For one of Kelley's Short & Sweet swaps, we had to alter a mousetrap and my partner(COB) liked Graphic 45 paper so I went with some that I had called Playtimes Past.  I then collected various game and toy pieces and adhered them to the mousetrap. I used Lincoln Logs, checkers, dominos, tinker toys, scrabble tile, dice and Monopoly and Parcheesi game pieces along with Racko cards.
It should make for a neat conversation piece.

Here is the bottle I altered for Kelley in another of her swaps!!! She comes up with some really cool ideas. She is very much into grunge and I have only recently tried a couple projects. I wanted to make her bottle Shabby Chic in black & reds with lace and flowers. Well that didn't work. The more I added ink to my tissue tape covering, the more PINK it looked. You DO NOT send Kelley anything PINK!!!!

So what to do. I had seen an ATC with thick embossing powder on it and thought it would look good on the bottle. I used Graphic 45 Communique papers because I had a "Message" to add. So I found my chunky powder, added some black and red to it and just started covering spots on the bottle. I repeated the process until I got it so it looked pretty good. Personally, it didn't look good to me but it was grunge so I hoped Kelley would like it. I added some chain to hold the "message" and also added a couple charms. One was a telephone and the other was a movie camera. Both fit the theme and were the right colors so I was happy.

The message was a personal autograph  for Kelley that I got from Tim Holtz when I went to his work shop. Needless to say, I think she was pleased with the bottle and message.

 

Here is my other Grunge project. !!!

My partner in another swap mentioned that her son just got a '78 Camaro and he was fixing it up. So I came up with the idea of making something for her to add his picture.

I started with a canvas. I took HVAC tape(found at Home Depot) cut it into large pieces and ran it thru the Cuttlebug using a few different embossing folders. Rivets, Diamonds and Chevron I think they were.  I torn the tape  into pieces and placed them all over the canvas. I then took Black Soot paint and covered the whole thing. I wiped off some and then did the same thing a 2nd time. I did a third coat but added some Vintage Photo paint this time. I then took a piece of chipboard for a picture mat . I grunged it up with paint and added some corners. The picture will go inside the corners leaving about 1/2 inch all the way around the mat. I bought some inexpensive tools and grunged them up and hot glued them on the canvas.  Again, I wasn't sure about it but the recipient seemed to like it!!!!

It was still missing something according to my "helper" so I added a faceplate with tiny letters spelling "Camaro" on the bottom left. Guess I didn't take a final picture!!!!