Second Annual Giveaway!!!

It's that time again!  Time for our second annual big giveaway!  We have gathered some goodies in hopes of enticing you to our blog and to share some of our stuff.  We all have plenty of stuff, don't we?  Each week we will post new stuff so make sure you come back and enter each time.  To enter you should be a follower and you must leave a comment on the corresponding post.  So if you hope to win this pincushion made by Jan, leave a comment on this post.

Also included is this book published by Lark that will tell you how to make your own sweet little pincushions!

Are those not the cutest little things?

And how about those, made using child size tea cups!

Here is the back of the book.  It is used but in perfect condition other than a little fading on the cover.

You need to leave a comment on this post, telling us you are entering the giveaway and don't forget to make sure we have a way of contacting you if you are the winner.  We will choose a winner on Tuesday April 3rd.  Then we will post our next give away!  We have 5 in all and the rest are even better than this one.  In fact, if I thought I could get away with it I might leave a comment myself.
Good luck!  

THE GIVE A WAYS ARE GETTING CLOSE!!!

5 GIVE A WAYS COMING UP!!!!!

Boy, there was lots of laughing going on at Pinky's Tuesday. Our topic of the day was most embarrassing moments and did we have some! No, I can't share them with you...that's the neat part of this group. What comes to S & B stays at S & B. :>))

We were all pretty much working on different things.

Jan was getting torn sheet strips ready to make another crocheted rag rug. She is starting with multicolored strips, but felt it needed a bit of a break with some red plain fabric mixed in. I think it is going to be a stunning rug.

April was practicing her calligraphy. She says she hasn't done it for awhile, but what she was doing looked fantastic!

Pinky was working on a new iris folding pattern. She was trying some new papers and they turned out beautiful.

Karen was working on a few of her art journal pages. She used her hand made coyote stamp on one of them. Check out the picture.

Mary was working on Easter cards. She used vintage postcards and made new cards to give away. She used both front and back of the vintage cards in the project.

We will meet at Jan's next week for a little tutorial in art journaling. I think this will be a real challenge for this person, especially...ready to give it a go.

GET READY FOR OUR GIVE A WAYS!!!! WE ARE GOING TO HAVE 5 OF THEM!!! JAN WILL START WITH THE FIRST ONE. PLEASE COME AND COMMENT ON OUR BLOG TO ENTER...EVEN BETTER IF YOU FOLLOW US :>))

Welcome Linda and Charlene!!!

Tuesday was such a great day and we even had two visitors. Linda is from down the road and brought her knitting project with her. She is making a lovely cream colored throw and makes it look so easy when she is knitting.

Charlene didn't bring anything to work on, but seemed to enjoy watching the rest of us with our projects.

Karen brought her finished word portrait of her grandaughter, Payton. I really like the way she worked in all the color in her words. She was also working on some wonderful Easter cards. Sorry, Karen...I got your cards the wrong direction.

Pinky was working on some new snowflake cards and they turned out fantastic.

The red zippered pouch below, Jan received from a trading buddy in the UK. The work on it was amazing. Jan traded her an art hanging for it...Great trade!

April was showing us how to make stickers and 3-D stickers from printing on adhesive paper. It saves money and you have access to many stickers that way. They turned out great. April says they are not quite as brilliant in color as the originals, but no one would know that, but her. April, also showed us her chemo hat that she had started...what a wonderful project.

The "Faith With Courage" page is one from Jan's art journal. In the near future, she is going to give us some pointers on how to do an art journal. Hopefully, at Pinky's next week, we will be starting on this.

Mary was finishing up a hat that is being sent to children in Afganistan and started a dish cloth...nothing too artsy there.

April's new friend, Caroline, was supposed to come visit, too, but had an appointment. We are hoping we can get to know her next time.

Don't forget...we are going to have a give-a-way soon, so keep watching for the details...

Forgot To Show You Girls...

This is a present my friend, Karen Bailey of Mosier, Oregon gave me. It is made of the tiniest of stitches and with a lot of love. I just wanted to share it with you. I meant to show it to you last time all of us were here on the Long Beach Peninsula. I think you can double click on the pic to see the tiny stitches. Pretty neat, aye?

Challenge For Followers...Scroll Down After Reading...

OK, Followers...Your challenge is to guess who's self portrait belongs to who. Post it in your comment, OK??? This was Jan's great idea and sounds like fun!

Finishing Up Our Self Portraits...

After working on our self portraits for several hours and trying to come up with the many words needed to do this, I took the following pictures. All the detail you see in each portrait is made up of words about us, things we like, things we dislike, songs, memories, etc., etc. I think we all really enjoyed this challenge.

If you scroll down, you will see how we started on the project. This part is near completion. Some of us are going to stop here and some of us are going to fine tune their portraits. We would encourage you to try this challenge for yourself.

Self Portrait in Words Challenge...

April challenged us to do a self portrait made of words. This may sound fairly easy, but it wasn't quite as easy as it sounds :>)) Last week, April took a picture(s) of each of us. She had them waiting for us at her house this week, along with paper to trace the outline. We used her east windows to trace around the features of our portraits. The next step was to do a rough copy and start putting words around the features. Most of us used very fine tiny letters to do this.

In the pictures below, I will show part one of what we did and the next set of pictures will show us finishing up for the day. We all used words of our own choosing...some from past, present, and future. Take a close look and see how each of us went about doing our self portraits.

You may notice that we all look MUCH younger, possibly thinner, and just greater than normal. We were doing a little plastic surgery on paper :>))...very fun! We challenge you to try this. It was a fun project.

Tuesday we all met at Mary's and the first thing on our list was to check out our paper weight challenge. Some of us used the oblong shaped ones and some of us used the round ones. I'm enclosing some pictures of all five.

#1 Mary

#2 Jan

#3 Pinky

#4 Karen

#5 April

April, also, has a new challenge for us using our self portrait done in words. I think we are all up for this one. It really sounds like a "challenge" for me, at least. April will be gone this Tuesday to Redmond, but in two weeks will give us all the details we need to get started.

Mary had a pot of chili for us to munch and some french bread.