An Exciting New Giveaway by Sea Babe Jewelery

I have a really fabulous giveaway to share with you today. You jewelery aficionados are going to skip a heart beat. Sea Babe Jewelry wants to give YOU one of their spectacular Infinity Rings. You just give them your ring size at the end of the giveaway, and they'll make one just right for you!Sea Babe Jewelry features handcrafted artisan jewelry from the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. Their inspiration comes from the beautiful beaches and surroundings that the artists, Kristin and David, call home.

They use 100% recycled gold and silver in their designs... and they can make custom wedding sets and bridal designs (brides take note!)
Kristin and David are currently working with a ton of silver. They just came out with a new "hoop" line with a wide variety of takes on the classic hoop earring. Fun and easy to wear, they go with just about anything! Kristin has been wearing her leaf hoops everyday since David made them for her. Kristin and David just participated in the local elementary school's Christmas craft fair, at Sunset Elementary School. It was really fun and it jump started them into Holiday Season mode even more! They are planning on working hard all season and then gearing up for Valentines Day next.

Interested in winning an Infinity Ring from Sea Babe Jewelry and bringing home a piece of Hawaii? I thought so!Here's how to play:
1. Go to Sea Babe Jewelry's Store and pick your favourite jewelry item. Come back here and tell me which pretty piece of bling is your must-have for right now (1 entry).
2. If you spot a ring, jewel, or necklace that you love in Sea Babe Jewelry's Store, you can purchase it, and get TWO extra entries for EACH purchase in this contest. You must leave a note in message to seller or add a new blog comment here to ensure that your purchase is counted.
3. Follow this blog, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
4. Twitter about this giveaway, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
5. Blog about this giveaway, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
6. Heart Sea Babe Jewelry's store, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
7. Sign up for Sea Babe Jewelry's Twitter (http://twitter.com/seababejewelry) (1 entry.)
Note: It is important to make a new comment for each entry as I use a random number generator for choosing the winner. If you put all your entries into one comment, it will only be counted once!This is one giveaway you don't want to miss out on because Sea Babe Jewelry makes really pretty rings. I know you want to sport one of the lovely Infinity Rings on your pretty hands. Such lovely fingers shouldn't be left unrewarded! :PGo ahead, enter this contest. Your keyboard-happy hands will thank you.

UPDATE!
This contest is now over. Thanks for entering!

Good luck!

Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots Giveaway WINNER

Hello, everyone! I hope you have having a wonderful day. I personally know that it is a VERY excellent day for somebody SPECIAL. Who is this special somebody? Why, the winner of the Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots Giveaway, of course!

That's right! The contest is over! And thanks to the help of a random number generator, the winner of the Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots Giveaway is...... AdronsCatherine!

Congratulations to AdronsCatherine! You are the lucky winner of a fabulous wristlet keyfob by Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots!AdronsCatherine chose the Giraffe keyfob as her prize of choice. A very nice choice indeed!

Thank you to everyone for entering the Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots giveaway. I had a great time putting this together, and I hope you will join me again for the next giveaway coming asap!

If you didn't win, but you really wish you had, don't fret! You can always head over to Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots' shop and surprise yourself with an early Christmas gift. You don't have to wait for a contest to snap up your favourite wristlet keyfob :) It's waiting there for you right now.And if you'd love to have a giveaway on this blog, just let me know. I love hosting them :)

Have a great day!

Surprised Kitty

Oh, and just a reminder to enter the Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots giveaway, if you haven't done so already. It ends tomorrow!

Good luck!

Happy Birthday To Dad

Today is my dad's birthday! He was really excited about getting a year older and was getting ready for it yesterday :) I love how he's such a kid sometimes. It really adds a lot of enthusiasm to life.This is the card I whipped up for him today. I used one of my newest ACEOs. This design is very versatile. It comes in rainbow colours, Christmas colours, orange tones, and red tones. I picked the orange one since it's cheerful and he likes orange/gold tones.
Inside are lots of present boxes. I figure my family can add doodles or little messages inside of them when they sign the card.

I hope he has a fantastic birthday. Yay for another happy, healthy year of life!

Tissue Box Drawer Organizer Tutorial

This is an easy project that you can do with the kids to help keep their drawers neat and tidy.

You will need the following supplies:
1. Empty tissue box
2. Scissors
3. Tape
First, grab your empty tissue box. Pick a nice, undented one with a design that you particularly like. This would be a good project to help reuse and recycle some of those really nice tissue box designs. I'm sure you've come across some favourites over time.
Take a sharp pair of scissors and cut diagonally towards the corner. Do this for all four corners.
Here is my tissue box with all four corners cut.
Now reach inside the box and tear out the clear plastic pieces. You don't need them and they will get in your way.
Here's my tissue box with all the plastic removed. You can discard the plastic.
Now it's time to grab your tape!
Tape down all four sides. Be generous with your tape and tape it down well.
Once all the sides are taped down, your tissue box drawer organizer is ready to use! That was easy, huh?
They're great for storing felt pens, pencils, doodads, and knickknacks! It's so much better than a big drawer with stuff just randomly thrown in! You can easily find things this way!
You can use empty chocolate boxes and their lids for this same purpose. What a great excuse to go eat more chocolates, huh?

Enjoy!

Hello And Blue Bird Tags

There are some new Blue Bird Tags now available in the shop featuring tiny prints of "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" They are super cute, tied with pale blue embroidery floss, and would make excellent additions to your presents and gifts.
There is also a new ACEO print available titled "Hello" featuring a very sweet Odie mouse on a vivid blue background. He comes with a white border or a black border, your choice.

Both available in my shop.

Fleeting Images Of Felt Owls

Here is one more ACEO that I can show you. It's called "Fleeting Images Of Felt Owls". It is vividly coloured and has spooky tree outlines behind sleepy Felt Owls.

You can find it in my shop!

Winter Bird Cheer On Frosty Lines

I didn't get around to taking pictures of the rest of the new ACEOs except for this little gem. It's called "Winter Bird Cheer On Frosty Lines", and it was created with a lot of love and whimsy when I was in a particularly festive mood recently :)

These cheerful little blue birds are celebrating the holiday season in candy cane striped hats and stockings hung from their icicle strewn telephone lines. Very cute, n'est pas?

It is available in my shop.

Packages In The Mail - ArtsyCraftsy2 And MngoJuice

I was excited to receive not one but TWO packages in the mail today! It's my lucky day!

It's also my lucky day because I am finally recovering from a bad cold. It knocked me out completely yesterday! Ack! I hate bad colds. I was puffing on expired inhalers (I have to remedy that...) and popping Tylenol Colds like an addict. Yuck... Ironically, it was when my mother gave me her magical Chinese herbal tea that I started to get better. Coincidence or is mom's foul tasting medicine really magical? Hm... Apparently Coldfx was based on some magical Chinese herbs too.Well, here is package numero uno! It's from Mngojuice! Nice white envelope...
... nothing special on the backside.
Inside is a nice business card, and a freebie! That's a bottlecap magnet with a honey bee and some sequins on it. Lots of fun :) Thanks, Mngojuice! For those of you that run Etsy shops, I highly recommend including business cards in your mail outs.
Wrapped in a whole lotta paper, were these resin pendants. A raven, a butterfly, and a beluga whale. These pendants are actually a lot bigger than I had imagined.
Next up, is a package from ArtsyCraftsy2. Her trade arrived in a manila envelope.
She decorated the envelope back with a little pressed paper sticker. I rather like it when sellers take the time to decorate their envelope. It shows that they care about the experience the customer has in receiving their purchase.
Inside was a business card and a little black box. I like that she hand-wrote a message to me. That's very sweet. I also like that her pendant arrived in a box. That makes it seem like she values her product and treats it like real jewelery, which it is!
And here is the precious little pendant. This pendant is smaller than I imagined a scrabble tile pendant to be, but it is really quite adorable. ArtsyCraftsy2 actually custom made this for me because I'm a big fan of old-school Alice in Wonderland illustrations. Thank you so much, Artsy Craftsy! It's lovely.

Up next? I have some wonderful new ACEOs to show you. They turned out wonderful!

Two Love Birds And Three Little Tweeters

In spending more time with my parents, I can now envision them as the two love birds that once built a nest and had little birdlings to feed inside. When I go to the supermarket, they twitter about looking for various contraptions to improve the function of their nest, and they bicker and delight over what to bring home to feed their birdlings.

I find it fascinating to think that this is how they made my previous house a home for three little children - three little well-fed children! I don't crave junk food as much as my counterparts today because there was never a shortage of tasty treats to eat in the house. My dad made sure of that!

In moving to a new house, my parents have been taxed to the maximum. They are not as young as they were when they first built their nest for three little ones, and yet they try very hard to rebuild it now. My sister mentioned that she felt that moving had aged them significantly, and she felt worried about that. I worry too.

In some ways, I am truly thankful that I was laid off at such perfect timing. I have had ample time at home with my mother to help her unpack, clean, and organize the new house. If I wasn't home every day like this, she would be attempting all this work alone! I can't imagine that because all this cleaning tires me out completely, and I'm just a young 'un.
I think it would be terribly lonesome alone in a new house too. We came from a tiny townhouse and this place is enormous in comparison. I'm glad that I'm here to keep her company (and that she's here to keep ME company!)

For my parent's recent anniversary, I decided to put one of my Putting Down Roots ACEOs to use. They reminded me so much of the birds that started off at the Putting Down Roots No.3 stage that it seemed too perfect to miss out on. Here they are with their golden nest and one little, fuzzy birdling. Ah, the beginnings of what would be a happy family of five!
And inside are the 3 grown up tweeters with all their distinguishing traits. I'm the short, fat one with long hair, my brother is skinny and tall with short hair, and my sister is tall, slim, and wavy/curly haired. I made speech bubbles for each of us so that we could write our anniversary well wishes.

This was a fun project for me :) My parents liked the card and found the grown up tweeters amusing. They asked why they have another fuzzy baby bird on the front of the card. My sister said it was a grandchild :P

Have a happy day!

A Giveaway From Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots - Win a Designer Wristlet Keychain or Key Fob

Great gift ideas are still to come in my giveaway series on this blog. I'm glad you're here! Welcome, and I hope you enter in this note-worthy giveaway today for a wristlet key fob or wrist keychain from Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots. Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots offers a variety of key fobs in her shop, ranging from the fun and funky to the delicate and dainty. She uses the most lovely fabrics for her key fobs, including new designer fabrics (raided from her mother's fabric stash). With big names like Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, Jennifer Paganelli, Joel Dewberry, Michael Miller and others, you can be guaranteed that her wristlet key fobs are candy for the eyes.As a college girl working hard to pay her way through school, the artist behind Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots realized that she loved creating, meeting new friends through Etsy, and the joy of a happy customer. All her items are lovingly made in a smoke-free home, making them a great gift idea for your non-smoking, scent-sensitive friends.
Want to win one these wonderful wristlet key fobs? Here's how to play!

1. Go to Puppy Dogs N Polka Dots' store and pick your favourite key fob. Come back here and tell me which wristlet key fob is your must-have for right now (1 entry).
2. If you spot a key fob that you love and can't wait for a contest to get it (in case some lucky person wins it before you get your hands on it) you can purchase it, and get TWO extra entries for EACH purchase in this contest. You could possibly buy your cake, er key chain, and win an extra one too! You must leave a note in message to seller or add a new blog comment here to ensure that your purchase is counted.
3. Follow this blog, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
4. Follow Puppy Dog N Polka Dot's blog, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
5. Join Puppy Dog N Polka Dot's mailing list on her blog, tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
6. Twitter about this giveaway, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
7. Blog about this giveaway, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).
8. Join Puppy Dog N Polka Dot's fan page on Facebook, and tell me you did so as a separate comment (1 entry).

Note: It is important to make a new comment for each entry as I use a random number generator for choosing the winner. If you put all your entries into one comment, it will only be counted once!

Need some inspiration? Check out some of the awesome key fobs you could win...
Drool... good bye ugly key fobs, hello designer fabrics! You know you have some people in your life that need a new key chain. C'mon, we all all know them. Their keys dangle from the least attractive of key chains. Well, perhaps you can save them from a lifetime of dreariness and kitsch by giving one of these pretty things. They'll think of you every time they open a door! (Did you see the light bulb that just lit up above your head?)Go on, leave a comment. You can't win if you don't try :)

Contest ends November 28, 2009.

Good luck, and have fun playing!

Digital Collage Sheets Now Available At Blue Pandemonium

Great news! There are now even more ways for you to add cuteness to your life and your crafts. Digital collage sheets for some of your favourite paintings are now available in my shop!
There's a Putting Down Roots No. 1 collage sheet available with 18 different designs to choose from. This would be perfect for tree, family, and love themed pendants, stickers, and magnets. I'm sure you can think of a lot of different ways you can put this pretty picture onto a perfect gift for someone this Christmas. Some of you have asked about Why Does It Always Rain On Me? stickers. Well, now you can print your own from this collection of 19 different designs. He's so cute and sad with his little rain cloud. You know that grumpy friend or family member would appreciate this! And perhaps you'd like to vandalize every book you own with some stickers you could print out non-stop.Finally, there's a digital collage sheet of 48 different Mrs. McRooney Mice images taken from many of my ACEOs, prints, and bookmarks. Anyone with a soft spot for furry little friends would love a pendant made from one of these. There are so many images to choose from that you'll be able to find something for everyone.

I hope you'll find these high resolution (300 dpi) digital collage sheets useful for your crafting and your Christmas gifting ideas. You can also use them for scrapbooking and for making some pretty darn cute cards. They currently come in 1 by 1 inch squares, but if you'd like them in a different shape or size, please let me know.

Have a happy craft-filled day!

BUY 3 ACEO GET 1 FREE SALE in my shop!

If you've been eyeing my art for a while and didn't want to make the leap yet, now's the time! I have a SALE going on in my shop! Buy 3 ACEOs and you'll get 1 free! That means that you can be a thoughtful friend to 3 different people, and reward yourself with a favourite 4th ACEO for free!
This is also a good time to collect ACEO series, like the Putting Down Roots series which is a set of four lovely paintings.ACEOs stands for art cards, editions, and originals. They are 2.5 by 3.5 sized collectible art. You can frame them into precious tiny paintings, attach them to photo clip displays, and paste them onto cards to make beautiful, artistic cards. You can also tuck them neatly into Christmas cards to send to loved ones, making them an easy-to-send gift.
With a sale going on, it's a perfect time to think about some distant relatives and friends that you might want to send a special little something to. But don't delay! The sale ends on November 30th, 2009.

I hope you have a wonderful, art-filled day!