The Craft Exchange Challenge with Martha Stewart Crafts

Holy Hannah. It was craftiness to the max last week when we had our last Craft Exchange of 2014. In case you’re new, the Craft Exchange is my crazy idea to put a group of creative people who like to DIY together, and have them make handmade gifts for one another. No one knows what each other is making until the virtual reveal that we affectionately call, “CRAFTMAS.” Craftmas happens 3 times a year, because more would seem like a burden and less wouldn’t be important enough to keep us interested.

We’ve been toddling along like this since January of 2013, and as fun as it is… I was ready to shake things up a bit. I had a vision to make this more like the Food Network show, “Chopped” where competitors receive a basket of ingredients and have to make something delicious with all the items in the basket.

Enter: MARTHA STEWART CRAFTS

They thought it was a pretty cool idea too. So much so, they sent us supplies to use.

And that just took craft exchange to a whole new level.

Using one adhesive, one product and one tool, these 15 ladies were off to Pinterest to find inspiration for their next masterpiece using:

• Fringe scissors
• Flocking
• Tinted Decoupage

The comments were hysterical. I’m pretty sure no one had ever used the flocking before and searching it online only revealed a 1000 different ways to use it on fingernails (no, I’m not kidding). The fringe scissors apparently gave many of them a heart attack — and carpel tunnel as Molly bravely tried to use them on leather. The ladies DEFINITELY loved the challenge and they tried products they otherwise never would have. Sarah even said she discovered a whole new aisle of the craft store!

The diversity of the projects was amazing. In no particular order we had:

• Two very different ornaments
• Hand-bound leather book
• Initial letter books
• A dollar-store make over village
• Shoes
• Bracelets
• Upcycled bottle décor
• Paper flowers
• Polymer clay necklaces
• Festive party straws in deco box
• Outdoor luminary
• Scarecrow glow jar
• Decoupaged flower pots (with live plants inside)
• Artsy mugs

I’ll be posting the how-to’s for several of the projects on my blog and social media over the next several days but in the interim, I invite you to view my flickr album of most of the projects.