It is a while now since I update my blog and I have been really busy creating. There have been lots of ATC swaps, altered book round robbins. One swap that I really enjoyed was 'no paper' ATC challenge. The theme was 'Out of Africa' inspired by all the beautiful imagery and colours from the film.

A while ago I was given one of those mini sewing machines to play with, so I decided that I would put it to use for this swap. I had some fat quarters in my fabric box, one piece that had a kind of 'ethnic' feel - cream background with tan, blue and brown patterns on it. I had a scrap of fabric that had some african masks printed on it, and some left over from making cushions for a friend - not really my cup of tea, but it was bright orange with navy patterns on it.

Armed with these bits of material and my mini sewing machine, I decided to start on my ATCs. I made a couple of mini-quilts, I matted and layered the different fabrics. Cut out the masks to appliquet onto the quilts etc. I also found a bit of green jute in my craft box, so added some of that to a couple. I carefully frayed edges and so on. It needed something more though - something to give it more dimension.

Searching though my stash of crafting goodies, I found a tub of beads - I had only paid £1 for a tub full in a home decor shop. I found some beauties that would go perfectly with my theme. Some had a leopard skin pattern on them, some were brown with silver patterns on - very ethnic - and some looked like amber with inclusions. Brilliant - now what the thread them on.

I went on another search - this time through all the fibres in my stash. I seemed to hit a brick wall with it. In the end, I just picked up a thin length of twine, threaded three or four beads onto it, tied a knot in each end and then stitched on end down onto the ATC. It looked ace. I was so pleased with it. Now I needed something to stiffen them with, as they just looked like bits of floppy stitched together material with no substance.

Well, the challenge was that we were not to use any paper - unless the ATC was temporarily fixed (by a mini peg, or clip of some sort) to a piece of card. I didn't really want to do that - I wanted to try without paper altogether. That led to yet another search through the craft stash - talk about a treasure hunt. I came up with some papyrus - disqualified that as a kind of paper, although it is from a plant.

In the end I came up with some funky foam! Great stuff is funky foam. There is so much you can do with it, and kids love playing with it. It is a very slim piece of foam, A4 approximately in size and can be got in all sorts of colours. Kids love to cut shapes out of it. It can also be heated and stamped onto - just hold the heat gun onto it until it softens, then stamp into it with a ready inked rubber stamp. It looks just like figured leather. You can put metallic rub on to the raised bits and add definition. Enough digression!!

I cut the funky foam sheet into ATC sized pieces and stitched each ATC to one. Great! It worked a treat. Not only that, I could take my cd marker and write all the necessary details onto the back.

I hope you like them. The recipients were very pleased.