Etsy Upcycling Contest

I recently entered the Etsy Upycling contest. I know it's a long shot, especially since I was out of town during the holidays and barely had time to meet the deadline. But hey, I can say I tried. The contest requires people to make stuff out of recycled materials to be posted on their shops with a maximum of 3 entries per person. Here are my entries:

"SHELLY"Shelly is a giant turtle floor pillow that I conceived for Uncommon Threads. This Shelly was made from leftover felted recycled sweater scraps we had for the show. Every inch of Shelly is recycled, except for the thread used to sew her together. Shelly is stuffed with fabric and more sweater scraps. Making Shelly is quite labor intensive and dusty (all the felt fuzz!) with all the cutting and sewing, especially wiht her size! I wasn't sure how to price her, but I settled for $80 due to all the labor involved.

"FLOWER"

Flower is a clutch made of a sleeve of a holey cashmere sweater that I embellished with scrap yarn and strips cut from a potato chip bag. Yep. I felted it, added a magnetic clasp and lined it with my hubby's logo shirt form a former employer (logo cut out of course). The flower on the flap is from bad CD. Again, the labor on this was quite a bit because of all the hand sewn and felted details, even if I didn't knit it up, so I settled at $44 as a price. I know some people may still think it's too much, but oh well, it's still way less than what it would be if I actually charged for hourly labor.

"SWIRLS"

Swirl is made of the same holey cashmere sweater as Flower. It is also embellished it with swirls and dots using scrap yarn and strips cut from a potato chip bag. The shinier dots and swirls are from a defective CD. I also lined it with my hubby's logo shirt form a former employer (logo cut out of course), but I utilized the pocket and button hole on the front of the shirt. The floral band on in the lining was a scrap from a project that was in my crafting trash pile. Again, the labor on this was quite a bit. I priced this one at $54 because the bag is a little bigger and took more time to put together.

I'm not sure when Etsy will be making their contest decision, but I really don't think that I will win. I just wanted to try and sumbit something, even with the limited time that I had. There are many really good and super creative entries out there (and a few crap ones, IMO) so I am sure that the judging committee will be having a challenging and difficult time!