My Third Handmade Gift Exchange!

As of yesterday, I have officially completed my third Handmade Gift Exchange from Craftaholics Anonymous!  This year, things went a little differently.  In the past, Linda appointed two people to each other.  This made a direct connection between two people, almost like partners.  Those two people emailed back and forth until they each sent their respective gifts to the other.  This year, we used Elfster to turn the exchange into more of a Secret Santa feel.  You make a gift for someone, and the person you made the gift for also makes a gift for someone else.  There is no direct connection this time; I have no idea who made my gift or where it's coming from.  I haven't decided which version of the exchange I like better yet, but I'm sure Linda is grateful for the decline in work (as in, pairing people up!) this time around.

And now, onto my gift!

The girl I drew, Jennifer, is obsessed with owls and is a self-proclaimed fabric hoarder.  I think I combined her two loves rather well with this adorable tile.  And then I personalized it with her and her husband's names.

The actual crafting portion wasn't hard at all.  I just drew and owl shape and a wing shape on paper, cut it out, used it as a pattern for the material, and Mod Podged it onto the tile.  After the glue dried, I wrote on the tile with a Sharpie marker.

I loved it, but I ran into a small problem.

Since I decoupaged the owls first and then wrote on the tile with Sharpie, I baked the tile to make the marker permanent, which resulted in the dry glue on my tile turning yellow!

You can't tell much in the above photo, but it was yellow!!

You can see here, the ugly yellow lines and how the girl owl was also yellowed.  It was awful, I almost cried. 

Don't worry, though, the story has a happy ending!

I thought perhaps I could leave it out in the sun to naturally bleach.  And thankfully, this hunch was correct! And so, all hope was restored in the kingdom and the two little love owls lived happily ever after. :)

Just mailed it yesterday (I had planned to mail it Thursday, the same day as the baking incident), so I hope she likes it!

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