Swapping miniboxes plus freebie Japanese girl game card

Goodday to you!

First of all, welcome to my new followers Daphne, Anneke, Mieke and Brigitta! And thank you for all the sweet comments I got, I loved reading them!

In an earlier post (HERE) I told something about a minibox swap and that I needed some practice first, so I made one for myself. This week I've been busy for the swap for Petra and since she has received it I can show you the result.

You had to choose a city. Any city in the world would do. I chose Tokyo, because in Japan spring is celebrated in a special way. See pink text below for more information.

I handstitched both the flower and heart charm.

For the flower I used 3 flat flowers of a cheap "Hawaiian" wreath (shop: Xenos). First I stitched them one by one so they wouldn't be flat anymore and then I glued them together on the box. The Japanese kokeshi girl charm is also from Xenos and the metal bead is from an old necklace of mine.

The fabric heart charm is quite similar to that of a recent post and tutorial of mine, see HERE for the link.

All the pictures I used are from the internet.

Even the background paper.

The Tokyo skyline was in black and white originally, so I changed the colours. I added a sjabloned flower, which I used on the tags as well. I used colouring pencils for sjabloning.

I thought it would be fun to add two tags, bound together.

I sjabloned two pieces of pink thick paper with white and pink flowers like I said above. Back and front. And I used the pink pencil to colour the edges of the tags as well. The flower I made of 2 wreath flowers like above.

The picture of the Japanese girl with doll is a scan of an old picture of a card game of mine. I always loved this picture when I was playing this game as a little girl and was very happy I could use it for this swap. Actually, she was my inspiration for chosing Tokyo. Isn't she lovely? The real card has even more beautiful colours, but they changed a bit when I scanned it.

You can find the scanned playing card as a freebie HERE.

I used an interesting text I found on the internet about spring in Japan but changed it a little bit. Spring in Japan is really celebrated in a special way. Here's the text:

Cherry blossoms are one of Japan's most cherised symbols. The herald the coming spring and symbolize rebirth. Newspapers and television report cherry blossom forecasts. Festivals are held. Friends and family gather for picnics under the cherry trees. The falling petals are knows as "sakura fubuki," which means "cherry blossom snowfall."

And this is going on RIGHT NOW in Japan! Cool! I would love to see it one day...

I also added a sachet (Xenos) which I free embroidered by hand and filled the sachet with goodies.

Then I made a little booklet with pictures of spring in Tokyo/Japan.

I added one stitched flower like above. I also added two typical Japanese paper lanterns I made of thick pink and red paper. And some other embellishing stuff.

I filled the box with goodies.

This was really fun to do, spring in Japan is so interesting! Thank you Nederlandse Swappers for hosting this fun swap!!

UPDATE: I removed the photos of Japan from this post since they're not my own and I just wanted to give you a glimps how beautiful Japan in spring is without intention to violate anyones copyright or harm peoples privacy.

Itte kimasu! Bye bye! Happy spring to you!

xx Wen