When I first received The Greetery's Notionables and Oval Hoopla die and insert, I cut lots of pieces out and assembled them. I put them in one of three wooden bowls I keep in my craft room and they have stayed right there until after Christmas when I needed two thank you notes for my college friends.
I absolutely love these dies! I grew up in Ohio in farm country. Most of my friends lived on farms, and everyone belonged to 4-H. Luckily for those of us who lived in the village, there was also a 4-H group for sewers. Amazingly enough, when we moved to New Paltz, NY when I was a junior in high school, I found another 4-H group of sewers and belonged to 4-H until I graduated from high school. I continued to sew for years, making clothes for myself, the guys in our family, and then for my kids. Hannah has worn a couple of the dresses I made for Sarah when she was a little girl. I gave up the habit when it cost more to buy the materials to make a dress than it did to buy a nice dress in the store. These Notionables are so realistic. I didn't include any of the scissors in my cards since they are too big for my 4-bar notecards, but I included one in the photo above. If you assemble it with a tiny brad, they open and close. The thimble is adorable, and one of my most prized possessions is my mother's sterling silver engraved thimble.
The Hoopla dies are also realistic. The frames die cut with a woodgrain pattern and the wooden fittings with the pin are also realistic. The insert die creates that tiny pattern around the edges that completes the look, and you can see that the thread die goes right through the eye of the needle.
These were a lot of fun to make and I still have plenty of assembled pieces to make more cards, including a pin cushion made from red felt--so cute! I'll drop these in Darnell's NBUS Challenge to honor the occasion of putting this set to good use.
