PRIMA giveaway!!

Prima is giving away a prize package worth $100 to celebrate their BIG SECRET!! Hurry over HERE to get the details and sign up for this awesome giveaway! :)

Spring Longings…

Hello! :) The snowy days are lingering and I’m wishing for the warm spring sunshine! How about

you? Fresh snowfall can indeed be gorgeous, but I’m just aching for spring flowers and no more winter coats!

I have two new pieces to share with you today… The first is my Spring/Easter Twinchie canvas for the ArtHaven Group. I’m leading the special swap for March and I have just been waiting for the perfect time to make my first collage type piece :)

I originally started out with a totally different idea… I was going to have cute little cut out animal shapes in different patterned paper with some flowers in different squares, but this took on a life of its’ own! A bluebird swoops over glittery eggs in her nest while a baby with two grey bunnies frolic on a hillside, spreading Spring cheer! Vintage flowers, findings, and german glass glitter add whimsy and sparkle throughout. A little kitten chases a butterfly who flits by and seems to pop off the picture while sentiments of Easter and Springtime state the joy of the season.

Most of the images are from Crafty Secrets- my favorite company for stamps and things… The image of the kitties (in the bottom row) is from a Peggy Loves Vintage CD image collection. Flowers in the center square are brand new from Prima and surround an old vintage rhinestone. The cute little bluebird button was found at Tessa Ann’s Etsy shop. I’m forgetting where all the trims came from except the vintage pom pom trim which I found at Sugar * Sugar. And the little metal butterfly is from a Making Memories Vintage Findings kit.

I also have a card to share…

Sorry about the bad photo… too much light!

This card is for someone who works with me- she’s leaving us to move back to her hometown, NYC, at the end of this week. I kind of like how this came out- even though I usually don’t like my cards… I debated putting glitter along the edges of the black piece backing the sentiment, but I thought it looked ok without it… What do you think? Also, there is a little black corner piece in one of the corners on the edge of the sentiment… can you spy it? :)

I’ve also given in and joined two Springtime swaps…

Linda’s May Day Tussie Mussie Swap!

And Miss Rhea’s Easter Basket Swap!

If you’d like to sign up for these awesome swaps, please just click on the pictures above and you’ll be taken right to information on how to join!

Hmmm… there’d better not be any more great swaps coming up because I don’t know how many more I can handle!! lol :) I signed up for a huge swap at Petticoats and Parasols where we are making a goodie for each of the 19 girls participating! So I have to get going on that, too…

I would love to sign up for Vivian’s Bunny Swap, but I honestly have no idea how to make a Bunny!! lol :) If you’d like to sign up for that one, though, click HERE!

I’ve also signed up for Cassandra’s new Ezine…

At only $15 for 5 projects and a chance to be in a swap using all your new techniques- it’s a steal! You can click the picture to sign up, too :)

Also, there is an awesome giveaway for this necklace going on at Fabulous K! Please click on the image to visit the blog and enter to win!

That’s all for now… Matt’s camera recently was without batteries, so I haven’t been able to take pictures of all the cool prizes I’ve won through OWOH, but I’ll be sure to get on that for my next post! Have a splendidly sweet day!! :)

Swap Treasures, Tea Party, and OWOH Winner!!

Hello! :)  Today I have some very special things to share with you…. as well as the winner of Wish, my OWOH giveaway prize!!

In the spirit of OWOH, brining people together, I wanted to tell you about how blogging has affected my life since I started about a year ago.  Not only is it a creative release, but I have also met some of the most wonderful people through bloglandia.  One of these people is Teresa.

I came across her blog one day, thinking that Maggie Grace was such a sweet sounding name and wanting to get to know the person behind the blog because she had attended an event I had read about that I knew I would have adored going to.  So I followed a link from that event page, thinking that I would meet someone like-minded, with the same creative interests as myself.  Little did I know that by leaving comments, I would open myself to a wonderful, blossoming friendship!

I learned her name was really Teresa, and you’ll just have to visit her blog to find out whom Maggie Grace refers to!  I should have known then that I was sent an angel, because I have only ever met one other Theresa in my life- and she was my babysitter for the first 13 years of my life.  Since then, we’ve shared some of our deepest, far reaching thoughts and feelings and our friendship has reached beyond the miles that are between us.

Before Christmas, we decided to swap goodies- (because I kept bugging her about this journal she had made for a show in fall that I had completely fallen in love with!! :)) 

(Taken from Teresa’s blog, Maggie Grace Creates)

One day not too long ago, I received a wonderful package from Teresa with so many delightful goodies inside!!

Beautiful scrapbook papers, tons of different sized tags (maybe so I could create a tag collage as she had been working on this weekend!!), a gorgeous 3 strand bracelet with my favorite color- light blue, and a beautiful hand soldiered pendant with lace inside!!

5 beautiful handmade cards with such sweet vintage images!

And a journal, just for me!!!, with that gorgeous angel paper!

Thank you so much, Teresa!!   :)

And I am so excited for this spring because I will actually be meeting Teresa in person when I travel to Georgia to attend the Petticoats and Parasols event!!  Teresa isn’t able to go to the event, but I am making a special trip upstate so we’ll be able to finally meet and hang out! :)  I can’t wait!!

One other instance of blogging effecting my Real Life stemmed from a recent swap I was in…  Last time, I posted about Speckled Egg’s Petite Inspiration Box Swap, and one of my swap partners was Vivian Neroni.  We came to find out that we lived only an hour away from each other!  And in her kindness, she invited me to Natalea Kandefer’s Valentine’s Day Tea Party.

Hmm… doesn’t this tree look familiar?!?!  :)  But mine isn’t decorated with nearly as many gorgeous handmade ornaments!!  I’ll have to get on that… :)

Pretty Valentine’s Day decorations!  See that little doll on the sofa…  there are some scary pictures of me giving her a little Valentine’s day love floating around out there… hehe :)

A pretty little Vday vignette!

Sweet petit fours made by the lovely Jenny of Lollipop Workshop!

One of Natalea’s Gorgeous chunky books 

A sweet corner of Scarlet’s perfectly pink bedroom!

What party’s complete with out a towering cupcake tower?!

Mmmmm… yummy Earl Grey Tea Cake!

Ornament/gift swap goodies!! (And once again, I forgot to take pictures of the ornament I made… oops!)

It was a wonderful time and Natalea is hostess extrordinaire!  And I got to meet Vivian, Jenny, Sandy, and Natalea, of course!

I will share pictures of the wonderful goodies I brought home from the party next time… because my camera ran out of batteries today!  :(

I’m so thankful for the friends I’ve made through blogging that mean so much to me and whose love far exceeds the bounds of space and bytes!!  OWOH was such a wonderful event- I met so many other bloggers whose work inspired me and overloaded my Google Reader with subscriptions!!  Beyond the giveaways, through the heartfelt comments I’ve received and been given, I was reminded that blogging is so much more than pretty pictures and words in cyberspace- it truly is a melting pot of ideas and a wonderful way to connect with others.  And I’m so thankful that I’ve been given the chance to meet such beautiful people through this medium!!

Now, for the giveaway…  :)

(Drumroll please….)

The Random Generator has chosen number 226!!!!

That’s Deborah!!  Congratulations Deborah!! :)

Thank you so much, everyone who left me a heartfelt comment during the giveaway!  I may not have been able to get back to you all, but I read every single one and I truly appreciate your time and effort in leaving me a special message :)

One World One Heart

This post will remain at the top of my blog until February 15th!! Please scroll down for NEWer posts!! :) Thanky :)

Hello! I am honored to be your next stop as you travel the blog world on your magic carpet! Please come in and have a look around! Although I am a fairly new crafter and blogger, not even reaching my one year blogaversary yet, I do hope you will find some pictures or prose that will inspire you :)

(Note: I swear there is a giveaway, but first, a little about me… :))

My name is Julie Ann and I’m 28. I was born in South Korea, in Seoul, and was adopted when I was 13 months old. I was raised in Rochester, NY but currently live in Buffalo, NY where I am completing my Master’s degree in Behavioral Neuroscience. However, I’m done with my coursework and am working on my Master’s project- exploring cocaine addiction and a possible treatment called Neuropeptide Y (NPY).

But this blog hasn’t had too much to do with my school or personal life… I began this blog to connect with like-minded people who were into papercrafts. I actually began my love affair with crafting back in February of 2009. It was all sparked by getting engaged! My boyfriend, now fiancee, proposed to me in January and in thinking about ways to have a budget friendly wedding, a lot of the sites were recommending making your own invitations and gifts. So, I actually began my journey with card making. However, I quickly found out how hard it was for me to do!! I don’t know why, but there is something so intimidating about a blank card! I never knew where to start or what to do… I looked all over the internet and saw gorgeous cards I’d love to be making, but I always felt guilty for copying someone else’s idea- so I didn’t.

Soon after, I found unfinished wood, in the form of birdhouses and jewelry boxes. I loved to decorate birdhouses with scrapbook paper and transform them from plain wooden houses to something “uptown” birds would love to live in! My jewelry boxes were covered in gorgeous scrapbook paper and then I quickly moved to luxurious flocked vintage wallpaper.

And then I decided I needed a Cricut so I could customize things and cut out whatever shapes I wanted. Soon after I bought the Cricut, I found a Yahoo group called SCAL Hints. I had no idea what SCAL was, so I joined to learn more about it. There, I began to see that people on the list had blogs and I would visit any one who included their blog within their signature.

That is how I found Penny Duncan. :) She was always so friendly and helpful in the group and her work on her blog was amazing! A very short while after I had joined SCAL Hints, Penny posted that she was going to start her own group called ArtHaven Creations Friendships. I never posted on the list- I am very shy in Real Life and didn’t ever really know what to say- but something told me to see if Penny would let me join her group, so I did. And she did! And I am SO GLAD that I did!!! With ArtHaven, Penny has created a family type atmosphere where we are free to talk about anything and everything! This is a group created around art, but the motto is Friendship first! It is so incredible to me that I have met so many wonderful people through this group which is still rapidly expanding.

Upon exploring blogland, I used to lurk all over the place! Even if I thought something was totally mind blowing, I would still never leave a comment because I was afraid I would be saying something dumb. Everyone whose blog I visited seemed so established, so why would they care about little old me over here, crafting on her kitchen floor (hence the name of the blog!)? However, that all changed one day when Jan Thomason mentioned something about her lurkers and told us to comment on her page! So I said hi- and that I was sheepishly admitting to reading her posts daily, but never saying a thing. And then something happened- she wrote back to me! And here I was, this nobody, being written to by someone else I’d never met before! And that’s the story of how I got over my fear of commenting :) Now I usually don’t give it a second thought- even if this person has published in 40 magazines and is considered one of the greats. My problem now is that my blog roll has grown so big that I don’t have time to comment on every single post! :)

For me, this blog is a record of my personal successes in crafting. I don’t consider myself an artist because I don’t feel like I am creating something brand new. I am more of an embellisher, modifying things and trying to pretty them up :) I usually don’t post all the things I start to create and give up or mess up, but there are a lot of those!! I haven’t expanded this blog too far into my personal life, but I may get there some day. But for now, it’s just usually about completed projects, swaps, and goings on in blogland!

I am a huge lover of all things shabby chic. Well, ok, maybe that is a little big much. I find myself more on the chic side of shabby chic. I love whimsy and pink. I very much appreciate vintage, well kept things, but don’t mind a chip here or scratch there. I love pink and light blue and aqua, white and cream, bright and pastel. I am a complete girly girl and loooooove fouf!!! My favorite things to use when I’m embellishing are feathers, rhinestones, pearls, flocking and glitter.

Whew! That’s a lot of text. LOL! There was supposed to be something about a giveaway in here, right? Well, if you’ve managed to read along this far (or scroll past!), I finally have a picture for you :) Oh. And a GIVEAWAY! :)

Hmm, now that I think about it, I’ve never named a piece before. But I am going to name this one!! It’s called Wish- bet you didn’t know how I came up with that! Lol :) One World One Heart means to me a coming together of a group of people who want to share and connect. Each of us is bringing ourselves to the table to try to better ourselves and reach out to others. We all have hopes, dreams, and wishes. My piece reflects this wish of Peace. Fouffy white feathers surround the wooden star trinket box as if supporting the star on a cloud. The star reflects the light from iridescent pink sequins dancing along its’ edges and glitter plays with the light reaching the tips of the crepe paper medallions. A white dove, with pink glitter tipped wings, sits atop a pink pearl in the heart of the medallions, representing Peace. The top is held in place by magnets which opens up to reveal a star shaped cove in which to put a small but prized treasure.

In honor of One World One Heart, I am offering Wish to one of my commenters. If you would like to enter to win this piece, please leave me one comment on THIS post. You don’t have to have your own blog to leave a comment here, but if you do not have a blog, please leave your name and email address so I can contact you if you’re the winner!! This giveaway will end at 6pm EST on February 14th,2010, and I will post a winner on February 15, 2010.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and visit! I hope you will come by again and often! Have a wonderful week :)

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Tomorrow's the Big Day!!! Be sure to click on the image above to visit Amada's enchanting blog during this event and find out how to enter her extraordinary giveaway going on until the 13th! Trust me, you won't want to miss out! :)

But TODAY, you can enter the giveaway by Edera Jewelry!!

Ivy is celebrating 1000 hearts- Hearts on Etsy, that is! And she's created this gorgeous piece to give away to one of her lucky followers!! Just click on the image to be transported to her beautiful blog and Amazing jewelry!

24 Hour Craft Network!!!!

Are you interested in participating in beta testing a website that will be dedicated to all kind of crafting 24 hours a day?? I sure am!! Please read the following interview from Creative Chaos with Carol Duvall where she explains what's in the works!

Karin: So, Kelly, now that I've been "personally chosen" to spread the word, what can you tell us about the site.

Kelly: Ummm, I’ve actually told many people about this; but I'm glad you can help us out! The site is not up yet; however, we are hoping to have it ready for beta testing in a a couple of months. What everyone can look forward seeing on the site is the largest fully interactive craft community online which will include many of your crafting idols, a market place where members can sell their own crafts, they will have access to amazing craft projects from the craft industries most talented and most recognized craft experts. We will be the HULU of craft programming.

Karin: That sounds exciting! Can you explain to everyone what that will entail?

Kelly: Well, they will be able to view and discover craft programming they never even knew was out there. We will be producing original icraft Network programming with all the Carol Duvall show regulars and the craft industries leading craft designers as well. There are so many bells and whistles on this site it will literally be a crafters utopia.

Karin: I love utopias! Especially when it involves crafts. So how can crafters participate on theicraftnetwork?

Kelly: There will be a variety of ways crafters can participate. Members will be able to upload and share their own projects and craft videos. We will be highlighting craft bloggers, events, news etc. The purpose of this site is to bring the best of the crafting world all under one roof.

Karin: So does that mean Carol will be back on our screen soon?

Kelly: Carol is going high tech; so keep an eye out for Carol and friends coming to a computer screen near you soon!

Karin: So, Kelly, can you let me in on any other secrets....please........pretty please......

Kelly: Ok.....I will say this, top secret of course, there is power in numbers and my wish is to build the largest online craft community that will support the launch of a 24hr craft network. I think the networks are missing out by not seeing the huge demand there is for this type of programming. I want to prove to them that there is a HUGE demand and an audience that will support this type of programming. THAT is why I need every crafter who misses The Carol Duvall Show and other shows like hers to email us aticraftwithcarol@yahoo.com and let your voice be heard!!! In the meantime, we will producing online craft segments and shows for your viewing pleasure on the site.

Karin: So one last question.....now that I practically know Carol on a personal level, do you think she would come over to my house if I cooked her dinner?

Kelly: Maybe with a little added security and some guidelines, you might get her to accept a dinner invite.....lol......

Karin: Yay! Carol's coming over for dinner! I hope she likes Costco chicken........Anyway, thanks so much Kelly for letting us all in on the big news.

Kelly: No problem! This is really just the tip of the iceberg. Stayed tuned for more and keep those emails coming!

Karin: So are we still on for coffee next week? Kelly? .......Kelly? Ok, my little person will call your people! Talk to you soon!

*********************************************************

Isn't it amazing!! If you'd like to participate, please send an email to icraftwithcarol@yahoo.com!!

It would be wonderful if you could help spread the news, too!! Please visit Creative Chaos for information on how to pass the word and for a chance at two beautiful giveaway prizes just for sharing this awesome news!!

Bursting with Amour!

Hello friends! :) I've been excited about posting one of my latest creations because I was just in love with it! And I have seen posts on other blogs about their creations for Cathy's Amour Valentine's Swap, so this is mine :)

This is the box I created for the swap:



It has so many of my favorites!!! Pink. Vintage lace. (Oh, how I love that lace!!! And I had *Just* enough to make it all the way around the top of the box!!) Rhinestones. A fan. Fur!! A bird. Swirls. Distressing...

Here's a close up of the fan...



Actually, I made a mistake. I forgot the dimensions of the box we were to be using and had to call Matt when I was out shopping. Um, and I somehow got it in my head that we were supposed to use something 8" wide and 6" tall! Oops. I think this box was 7.5"x7.5".... But that's ok, I got to spoil Tammy!



Tammy and I exchanged emails and I also read her blog. Many posts in her blog mentioned her being a fabric fanatic, so I included lots of different fabrics!! I wasn't really sure what her tastes were, so some of them were just plain fun fabrics, and then, this swap was supposed to be about giving from the heart, so I also included fabrics I would love to work with (if I knew how to sew!!).

I also found lots of embellies for her to play with, including a valentine's day flocking set! The box was unique because it came with a cool little tray in the top with dividers, so I had fun putting everything in its place :) But I forgot to take a picture of that and pictures of the sweet vintage apron I found for her- it was sheer white with tiny red flocked hearts!!!- and some of the other things, but here's some of what was in the box.


I hope that Tammy liked my Valentine's Day box and all the things inside! I had such a wonderful time making it and shopping for treats to put inside- Swapping is so much fun!!

And so are Giveaways!!!! Would you like a chance to win one of these exquisite bracelets???

Then please click HERE to be taken to Whimsical Creations' blog where you'll be given not 1 but 7 chances to win the bracelet of your choice!!!


Thank you for stopping by to visit and have a wonderful Thursday!!! :)

Old and New

Hello :) Today I have updates with the old and new. Unlike the last sentence, I’ll show you something new first :)

ArtHaven is having a Bird ATC swap and here’s my contribution :) I just love this birdie image!! This image can be found here: PeggyLovesVintage Peggy sells such wonderful images in her shop, please check her out if you're a whimsical vintage image lover like myself! Hmm… I’m really liking this, but not too sure about the lillies…. What do you think??

I also started taking Cassandra Van Curen's online class thru her E-zine! There’s a link for it over there, if you’d like to sign up!! ------> The first class was today, but I have to gather supplies before I can have any fun!

But I couldn’t gather any new supplies because tonight I had to go to court for a speeding ticket- eek!! However, it was much less stressful than I thought it was going to be because Matt offered to go along with me (10 points!! lol), and I found out that I didn’t need to worry about my license being suspended. I pled guilty to a parking ticket and have to take a defensive driving class and pay a $75 fine. Whew!!

Now for the old… Remember December?? Well, I participated in Sarah’s Shabby Pink Christmas swap where we made two pink ornaments for our partner. My partner was the lovely, talented Sherri Howard! Here are the ones I received:

On my pink feather tree. Oh yes, it’s staying up year round!!

Here are the ones I made for Sheri (these pictures were taken from her blog because I forgot to photograph them, as I forgot to photograph many projects in December!!)

It’s a shaker ornament with mica inside… The sweet image here came from one of my favorite artist’s, Debrina Pratt, Etsy store.

Thank you for visiting today!! I hope you have a lovely Thursday :)