Today is the last day (sob) to sign up for the Scrap Vomit Squares Swap.  (Happy to post internationally sign up here.  Only want to post within Australia, sign up here.)  I have been totally, massively, wonderfully blown away by the interest that this swap has received.  At the time of writing this blog post the international swap was #1 on Swap Bot’s Top Ten Swaps list.  NUMBER 1!!!!

Because I’m easily excitable and not very patient I started the process of cutting my scrap vomit squares a couple of weeks ago.  I got all my scraps out, ironed them and then started cutting.  About 10 squares into it I realized that my cutting skills are craptastic at best and that my squares are actually more like a rhombus.  I had just read about the Sizzix and I decided that I needed to take the leap and invest in a die cut machine.

…it’s the old cat in the shoe…

Now the beauty of a die cut machine is that you can cut lots of pieces of fabrics at once with a large degree of accuracy.  (Obviously there’s human error that can creep in like when you don’t line the fabrics up properly and cut half squares instead of a full square! Not that I would know anything about that!)  So it has been the perfect little addition to my crafting stash!

I purchased my machine and die from Overstock.com – the only reason I did this was because it was the only place I could find that had both the die and the machine and it was cheaper than all the other places that stocked them.  Now while the price was great the postage of the items left a lot to be desired.  They held the funds for the purchase twice – you know where your bank holds funds that are waiting to be cleared – so that shat me no end.  They didn’t post the items straight away – again something that ticked me off.  I ended up having to chase them up to find out where it was.  Admittedly once they did post it it arrived really quickly.   Anyway, enough about that.  On to the scrapping…

Now for those of you that don’t know I have a 3 month old son.  Where once I would have been able to unwrap my new toy and get down to business straight away I now had to find time in between feeds, naps, play time, nappy changes, crying and sleeping.  So it took me a wee bit longer to cut all the squares then I thought it would.  Also, I realized that I didn’t really have much “vomit” so I used it as an excuse to go out and procure some truly vomitty fabrics.  And oh my goodness there is some truly wonderful vomit out there.

…yep, that’s puppies in hats…

I made some special trips to the fabric stores around Canberra hunting for remnants, scrap bags and sale fabrics to cut and send around the world.  It was great fun.  I managed to find some nice scrap bags and some weird sale fabrics.  I just loved the hunt and the wonderful thing is that it hasn’t ended.  While I have my swap fabrics together I still need more fabrics for my quilt so I’m going to get to enjoy the thrill of the chase for scrap vomit for a while longer.  I’m especially looking forward to looking while on holidays… I have it on good authority that there’s some pretty special vegetable print fabrics in Townsville.

…it’s a jungle out there…

But back to the swap.  In the past week I have snuck time here and there and worked on cutting up my fabrics for the swap.  Today I finished the cutting and packed the squares ready for the swap.  Here’s the 49 squares I’ll be sending out:

I’m pretty happy with the pack I’ll be sending.  I’ve tried hard to get a good mix of patterns, textures and colours.  I just really hope the people I get in the swap appreciate them as much as I do.

I ended up having to cut 735 squares for this swap – that’s 49 squares for 15 packs! Thank goodness I purchased the Sizzix – it’s saved me an RSI attack.

I’m so excited about this swap I just really hope everyone else enjoys it as much as I have.  I can’t wait to see what everyone gets in the post.  It should be really wonderful.  I do hope I get some clown in my swap!