Matroyshka Madness

Whew, it's been awhile!  Hope you guys all had a wonderful holiday.  Ours was good . . . equal parts joyful, fun, irritating and depressing.  You know, a typical holiday spent with family.

My in-laws draw names every Christmas and I got my husband's sister Laura.  I was excited because Laura is super easy to please and I know she'd love a handmade gift . . . in fact, she asked for one.  It took a little brainstorming but I came up with something just for her.  Laura lived in Russia for a few months as a foriegn exchange student and loves the culture over there.  She especially loves matroyshka dolls.

Vintage Signed Matryoshka Nesting Doll Set of 7 by llandr on Etsy

I decided to make her a coin purse.  I originally wanted to make one in the shape of a doll but I wasn't sure I could pull it off or not.  Instead, I ordered some cute fabric (from MelissaAbram on Etsy) with dolls on it.  I tinkered with my original coin purse pattern and it was SO much easier than the first one I made!  It's not perfect but it is cute and functional.

I found these beads on Etsy and thought they were adorable, so I also made her a charm bracelet.  I slipped the bracelet inside the coin purse.  Since matroyshkas are usually nested (a smaller one inside of each one), I wanted to package it that way.  I couldn't find any online that were the right size and within the budget.

Excuse my gross goosebumpy arms . . . must've been cold that day.

Finally, at the last minute, I found this Etsy shop, Fantastic Toys.  It's full of adorable paper patterns to make toys with.  I would love to one day buy everything in this shop and just live in a paper wonderland.  Seriously.  I would never come out.  It'd be like TRON.  Only with paper and glitter.

They had a pattern for matroyshkas so I made the biggest one and . . . it was a perfect fit.  Now, to ship it.  I got the idea to run some scrap scrapbook paper through the shredder for packaging.  I love how it looked and I think I'm going to start doing this with my orders.  Instead of crumpling up book pages, I think I'll shred them.  It looks neater and saves space.

Overall, this present came out really cute and it got to Laura fine.  She loved it and I was happy I made a slam dunk with this gift.  It was really fun to make!

Finally, as I've said on Facebook, I'm looking for thoughts and experiences about Jane Eyre.  Do you love the book?  Hate it?  Why?  Do you have a special experience about the story?  Let me know!  Convo me through my shop and let me know.  I'm doing a "book report" about it for this blog and I'd love to have some other voices to talk about it.  Thanks!