Secret Valentine's Exchange Gifts

   This year I participated in a Secret Valentine's exchange. It's like a Secret Santa but if you aren't familiar with that, you basically get someone randomly assigned to you and someone else randomly gets you assigned to them. That way you know who you are gifting, but they don't know who's gifting them and you don't know who is gifting you.

   The lady I was assigned to is a member of GodsGirls, which is like Suicide Girls. It's a softcore "nudie" website who primarily focuses on women with alternative style.

   I wasn't sure what to make her at first. But I looked at her Amazon wishlist, I asked the coordinator for the exchange to have her pick out a couple favourite images from her GodsGirls sets, and I came up with three gifts for her.

   The one I like the most is a kitty hat! She had a similar one on her wishlist but it had terribly amazon reviews, so I made her one myself! That way I also got to make it in her favourite colour, mint green. ;D

    I made it using a super simple pattern on ravelry. It's just a big rectangle! So easy! It turned out very cute though, I know sometime in the future I will be making one for myself! I just used Simply Soft yarn.

   I want to start trying out nicer yarns. I am still fairly new to knitting and crocheting, so I didn't want to invest in nicer, more expensive yarn back in September when I learned to crochet. I stopped buying new yarn in December, except when there is a project I started that ran out of yarn and I just have to finish it! I am working on getting the current amount of yarn I have down to half before buying more. But I'm definitely gonna be a bit more choosey then.

   The second gift finally got my light-reactive dyes some more attention. I haven't used them for a while, since before I started this blog at least. They are really awesome, I even included a video about it below because I think people need to check it out. I got the kit that had the three colours they offered when they were pretty much brand new, but I believe now there are a lot more colours to get so I wish I waited a little while. I like the original red, orange, and blue but I would have rather substituted one for black, or purple, etc.

    Here are some photos of the shirt I made for the exchange using my Inkodye. It didn't turn out quite as bright as I thought it would, the dyes are over a year old and that may be why. It may be time to replace them with some new colours, anyways. ;P

 

    I took one of the images she sent me from her favourite GodsGirls photosets and in photoshop, erased as much of the background distractions as I thought was needed. I pumped up the contrast, vectorized the image, and inverted it to use as a digital negative. I had it printed as a local print shop, which only cost $3. And that print will last pretty much forever, even though I don't think I'll be reusing it any time soon.

    I left the print in the sunlight from my crafting room window pretty much all day, so it turned out as bright as it was going to. I could have done with brighter though. It seems my red dye (the top half of the shirt) has turned to more of a pink. It used to actually come out red. The contrast in these images is turned up a bit because I wanted the design to be clearly visible, I have a photo below that is more representative of what the shirt really looks like.

   The last part of the gift package I sent was a little art print, it was very simple to make but I thought she might like it, I just photoshopped out the background, did a little colour adjusting, added some mosaic pixels and her name on GodsGirls in mint, again! 

   Well, that's the package I sent for my part of the gift exchange. I can't wait to receive mine! I was going to wait to post these until she told me she received them, but I have tracking on her package and I know she got them (just no message yet) and I'm impatient so I'm just posting them now.

   Are you making some sweet, handmade gifts for Valentine's this year? What have you made for the holidays so far? I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!