sachets and seeds

The weekend before last was a little too cold for me to work outside, so I went and played in my a craft room for a few hours. I made these sachets and seed tags to sell, I have some things on consignment at a little shop in Owego, NY., called The Left Bank. The next time I go down there I am going to take pictures of the inside and do a post about it. It is a great shop!

 The sachets are made out of little pre-made muslin bags that we had left from when we used to do trade shows, they come with a drawstring in them, but I pulled it out because I wanted to sew them shut. I ironed them flat, then stamped on them. Then I sewed the lace across the bottom. I filled them with lavender buds (mom had a bag left from some project), then sewed the tops closed after inserting a piece of narrow ribbon for a hanger (I sewed the rayon ribbon on at the same time, scrunching it as I went along), then hand sewed a silk flower and old button on. They were fast, easy and fun to do, it took me longer to pick out which stamps I wanted to use than to actually make them! You could just as easily make them from scraps of fabric, what a great way to utilize your scrap bag stash!

yes, you really need all this stuff!

This is a test tube filled with sunflower seeds, attached to a large manila tag that I made from an old IBM punch card. A friend gave me a huge stack of these cards, probably 20 years ago! I still have a lot of them, and this is a great way to use them. You could also use a manila folder or cardstock as the tag. After I stamped the flowers on there, I sewed a piece of decorative paper to it (I cut mine out with my sizzix machine to get the scalloped edge, but you could use fancy scissors if you have them).
Then I cut a piece of tissue box out, stamped on that, punched holes in it, and cut up a rubber band and tied that through the holes to hold the test tube.
For the test tube, (which I got a bunch of from the other Donna, she had bought them from a scientific supply company, and got a lifetime supply because if you buy that many, you get a really good deal!, so we are always trying to come up with creative ways to use them) I cut a circle out of parchment paper and glued it around the edge of the top of the tube to hold the seeds in, and wrapped some heavy thread around it to help hold it on, then tied on a sunflower charm. I wrapped a small scrap of paper around the center of the tube an tied it with ribbon.
You could use different kinds of flower seeds, but I chose the sunflowers because they are easy to grow, are large and fill the tube up fast, and I got them out of our bird feeder supply can that is on the porch!

I computer generated planting instructions and sewed that to the back  of the tag, then stamped it.
I thought they would make a fun gift!