Gifting Handmade

This time of year is a time known to me and my friends as "birthday season".  Beginning Feb 11, I have someone close to me with a birthday every week (sometimes 2 a week...) all the way up until we end with my birthday on April 1st.  It gets kind of crazy trying to keep up with all of them and trying to get cards/gifts to everyone on time, but this year I'm proud to say I'm doing pretty good having only been late on one so far. Woot! Go me! As I mentioned before, I was working on completing a purse for one of my friends to give to her for her birthday. I did get it finished, but as I suspected it was not quite on time, but only a week late which is pretty good for me to be honest, lol.

This pattern is the Reversible Sunday Sling by Amy Butler.  It went together really well and if I hadn't gotten so busy with some other stuff going on, I definitely could have finished it in just a few days.  I love this pattern and might just have to make one for myself one day also!

I hadn't intended on making something for my bestie, as I made her a purse for Christmas, but the only idea she gave me for what she wanted for her birthday was "make-up brushes". Well, I have no idea what brushes she uses so I will just get her a gift card to Sephora so she can pick them out, but I decided to whip up a quick make-up brush roll to go along with that. 

I loosely followed this tutorial which was super easy, but I made a few changes including the pocket size, adding binding, and quilting it.  The quilting was just some quick wavy lines which I had not done before but I'm thinking of using it on a larger project, so perfect chance to try it out!  This took me all of 3 hours to do, start to finish, and if I hadn't done the quilting and binding, I'm betting it would have only taken about an hour. All in all, a quick, fun little gift..I will definitely be remembering this and possibly even making a few to stash away for future use. 

I also got some hand made stuff from my other bestie, including this lemon-sugar hand scrub she made.

Check out the totally cute way she finished off the jar! This smells delightful, and um..I kinda want to eat it...

She also gave me this pottery that was made by one of her friends.

I love the detailing on this mug!  Her friend that made this has an etsy shop if you're interested, not much is in there right now but she is quite talented! 

The best gift of all has been that I got to spend an afternoon with both of my two best friends.  The three of us live in separate towns now and it's hard to get all of us together at the same time, but we were able to make a quick trip this past weekend to get together for a bit.  It was really short, but really great to be able to spend some time together :-)

Linking up with "This Week @ Love Affair with my Brother"!