After cleaning up my craft space earlier this week, I rediscovered my beloved compass from childhood.

I used to make these w/my mom which she learned as a child also. It starts off with a circle. Then, take the compass point and place it anywhere on the circle – make a half circle. Then, place the compass point on one of those points and make another half circle.. etc. To get more lines as in this one, place the compass point between the “leaves” that are created. I’m sure there are other versions of this.. curious to see if anyone else made these.

More info on these postcards can be found on my Flickr page.

for the postcard swap.

Adhesive tape strips halved & Disney themed paper ribbon

for the postcard swap.

Adhesive tape strips & sharpies

They are remnants from when KidMang made his promotional stickers and they turned to not fully print 8.5″ x 11″ sheets.  He gave me a couple of dozen of these strips and I wondered how I could apply them to the postcards.  Since they don’t quite work for a basket weave pattern, I just stuck them on in the same order without the weaving bit.

After this part, there were natural shapes formed between the different strips.  I chose bright colors to work with and patterns I usually doodle.   This isn’t the cleanest sketch but there are another 8 postcards to go to perfect.

Have you worked with a medium in an unexpected way that even you hadn’t originally thought of using?

A few weeks ago, I signed up for the “Postcard Swap 2010″ hosted by iHanna.   There’s still time to sign up (by Feb 8th) so if you haven’t, do so soon!

The swap consists of making 10 postcards to send 10 people. My personal challenge on this project is to not only make the 10 postcards in time but to only use materials I find or currently own.  I found these free advertisement postcards at a local restaurant.  They’re good for advertising Juliard.. and a postcard swap.  I’ll be covering these and other postcards I’ve found.  The other challenge is to figure out how to hide the original image well.

First postcard is basketweave pattern made of ribbon paper with paint chips as the borders.   The ribbon papers are meant for origami stars and the paint chips were once “borrowed” from Home Depot with crafty intentions in mind.

The paper is adorable and polka dotted.  Looking at it now, it kind of reminds me of a blanket.  If I could find this cloth, wouldn’t it make the cutest baby blanket?

Are any of you guys participating in the swap?

Sweet! Shop is just about done. You may have noticed that there is a Scarves section now too. The next shop update will bring something new to your eyes.. mini-scarves! And plenty of more wristwarmers. It’s going to be a cozy Fall season.

After 3 trips to paper stores, I figured out that all I needed were size A2 envelopes and thick pretty white paper which would turn out to be 4.25″x5.5″ notecards. A few tries in Photoshop and some help from a coworker, I managed to design my first set of cards! Here they are, you can get them at my Etsy shop.