Altered Clothespin Swap

I had decided to join my very first swap. I'll be honest, I was a little nervous about it. Was my work going to be good enough? Was it too flimsy? Wonder if they don't like it? All kinds of negative things running around in my head. But I realized I will never know until a take the plunge and I can't get better if I don't work at it. Amazing how that pertains to everything in life. So I joined an easy swap on Mini Album Scraps. Since I work a lot I don't have a lot of time to devote to my crafting endeavors so I needed to do a swap that I could do in my spare time. I went to the site and seen a swap for altered clothespins. You had to do 3 sets of 3 altered clothespins. I thought that shouldn't take too much time to accomplish so I took the plunge.

I took the clothespins apart and used Gesso on them. Then I used Marion Smith's Garment District design paper to cover the clothes pins on both sides and put the clothespins back together. I distressed the edges lightly with antique linen. On some I punched a hole in the top of the clothespin and added some charms. On some others I used a wood veneer butterfly that I stained with pickled raspberry and on the last ones I used a little crocheted doily flower with a paper rose on top. I thought they came out pretty good.

I also made an extra one for each recipient as an added gift. I used a beach/summer type paper, added a charm, and then little acrylic dots that look like little water drops. I had a lot of fun making these and now I have all kinds of ideas running through my mind for later. Can't wait to see what everyone else makes.