Petite Inspiration Box Swap, Paris Edition...

I think Heather (Speckled Egg) is secretly giving me the most talented swap partners. I have had incredible partners in every one of her swaps. The best part is that many have become friends. Here is my latest. I only had two partners because I signed up late but they were fabulous. 

Tricia Conlon-Perkins was one of my partners. 

She sent me this beautiful box, which is covered with the map of Paris. The border around the Eiffel Tower is copper glass glitter. There are several layers of dimension. Beautiful!

The banner and the cute round legs are covered with silver foil. The effect is most elegant!

Inside the box, there are wonderful treasures, including a soldered Paris pendant (wow, I so admire anyone who can solder this well), ecru lace, leaf-topped pins, another bitty soldered piece, a weathered key and some rhinestone-covered brass crown brads.

I also received this adorable pink decoupaged tin, beautiful stamped with Parisian scenes and full of more goodies! There are stamps and brown key fabric, an "S" pad of paper and an "S" list pad, more lace and a mega bottle-cap to play with. I love the "amore" charms and can't wait to work them into a bracelet!

One of my favorite things is a sack of crystals of many different sized. Thank you, Trisha. What a lavish 

treat!

Marian Ballog was my second partner. Her box has a 3-D Eiffel Tower (get this) covered with pale pink paper with my name beautifully printed on it! It is full of goodies...leaf ribbon (I love this!) another little decorated matchbox full of teeny tags, Rive Gauche ribbon, pink- topped crystal pins (can't get enough cute pins) and polka-dotted binder clips.

Get this. The tower opens up and has a secret drawer. Inside the drawer was an old amusement park token. The drawer itself is covered with Paris postmarks. How clever is that! (I was so focused on my "name paper" that I forgot to mention that the levels between the tower were covered with Paris maps. It tie together so beautifully.)

Look at this bunch of goodies! She sent me a ton of tags. I am nuts about tags. They were all different, some pretty, some funny, all special. See the funny queen on the one in the front? I also got two darling decorated notebooks, a fork worked into a frame (or, in my case, a Katsui card holder!!!), "S"kleenex and other special ephemera, some very old. In the front, you can barely see a white packet. That is a sugar packet with fleur de lis on it. I thought it was so funny. I laughed out loud at the package in the back. I have it boxed because the box is also hilarious. This is a Marie Antoinette action figure. Her wig and her head come off!!! I love it. How will I ever take her out of the box? Marian clearly has a great sense of humor!

She wrapped the little treats specially. Several gifts were wrapped like tubes of candy, in pink-striped fabric. Others were in black-striped bags, tied with pink and white-striped string. You can get a slightly better view of the fork to the right. Thank so much, Marian. 

This was such a fun swap. I am hooked on decorating match boxes and have all my boxes displayed. 

P.S. I am doing fine but had a little scare this week. I swallowed a handful of supplements and aspirated two. I coughed my crazy (I mean it) and one popped out right away. I didn't know I had another one in my lung but felt short of breath all week. On Friday (after nine hours of deep coughing) I popped out another. This resulted in a bronchioscope at the pulmonologist's that day to see if there were more. I have some damage from the nasty thing just sitting there which he expects will heal and I was told that only half my lung had been functioning all week. The morals of the story...don't just toss down your pills and trust your body's cues when something feels funny.

-Suz