Anodyne Design » Good Karma

You Can Be A Winner

Shannon — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:00:09 +0000

Thank you to everyone who has been commenting on my blog lately, to all of you who have clearly taken the time to read through my giveaway post and come up with wonderful, creative comments! I have enjoyed reading them as they come in, and I can already tell that it’s going to be VERY hard to pick just one comment that has grabbed my attention. You all deserve to be winners. I wish my budget was big enough to allow that. As it is, keep the comments coming! I’m loving them!

Since this is Bloggy Giveaways Carnival week, and my giveaway is ongoing until Thursday night, I wanted to remind you all that you can still be a winner! I don’t know if that’s important to you or not, but I know I sure enjoy being a winner. First off, please enter my giveaway for a card wallet. Once you’ve done that, check out the more than 600 other giveaways going on this week that are connected to the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival. And be sure to check out Chia’s giveaway for a beautiful photo album!

If you’re the kind of good-hearted person that likes to give back (but still likes to do a bit of receiving, too!) consider participating in the Handmade Pay It Forwards that TeeGee Studios, Flying Shoes, and April’s Flowers are hosting. They will send you a special handmade gift (and I sure do wish I could sign up for their PIFs myself!) if you promise to offer three new people a handmade pay it forward. I think it’s a wonderful way to receive a very special handmade gift and share your own handmade love with others. And I happen to know that TeeGee, Wendy, and April are all very talented artists.

Handmade Pay It Forward

Shannon — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:00:56 +0000

I found this via Queenvanna’s blog, although it appears to have been making its way around the Internet for awhile in various forms. Basically, it’s based on the idea from that movie, Pay It Forward, where (Cotton Spice says it nicely), “acts or deeds of kindness are done without expecting something in return, just passing it on, with hope that the recipients of the acts of kindness” will continue to pass on their own acts of kindness.

If you are interested in how this meme has traveled, try googling “handmade pay it forward.” All sorts of participating blogs (too many for me to chronicle here) come up.

Now, the rules for the interation of the meme that I’ve signed up for:

I will send handmade gifts to the first three people who leave a comment and tell me they would like to participate. You must have your own blog and must continue to ‘pay it forward’ by promising the same thing to your readers. As for the particular handmade gifts, I don’t yet know what they will be. Hopefully you will be able to tell from browsing through this blog, my flickr, or my Etsy shop that I’ll make you something nice, whatever it is. (And who doesn’t love surprises?) Another level of surprise is that I don’t yet know exactly when I will send your handmade gift, but I do promise that I will send it to you within the next 365 days. Imagine, some day when you aren’t expecting anything special, a handmade present just for you will arrive at your doorstep. How nice!

To summarize:

- anyone with a blog can join.
- the first three people to leave a comment with a valid email address (I need to be able to contact you!) on this post will receive a handmade gift from me.
- I will send your gift within 365 days.
- in return, you have to pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog (whatever you want to make, no rules or limitations.)

Who wants to play?

Handmade Holidays

Shannon — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:00:26 +0000

Now that it’s November, I’m seeing holiday decorations and talk of holiday preparation everywhere. I even walked into one store that had Christmas carols playing on November first! A bit early for Christmas music, in my opinion, but I don’t think planning ahead for the holidays is a bad idea, especially if you plan to make some of your gifts. If you don’t regularly read Sew, Mama, Sew! I suggest you check it out. For the month of November, each day will be dedicated to different types of handmade gifts you can make, with links to great tutorials. Even if you aren’t planning to make your holiday gifts, this will be a great crafty resource.

And while we’re talking about handmade and the holidays, have you seen the Buy Handmade pledge yet? Sponsored by a bunch of crafty, handmade-oriented web sites, like Etsy and Craftster, Buy Handmade is a promise to buy handmade for the holidays and request that others do the same for you. If you wonder why you should bother to do that, you can read up on “why buy handmade?” Even if you don’t want to make the pledge, you may want to think about incorporating something handmade into your holidays, simply because of the extra care and love that goes into it. Especially if you’ve made it yourself. I know that not all of my holiday gifts will be handmade, but I will be making some and those will probably be some of the best gifts I give.

Donation

Shannon — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:00:19 +0000

I haven’t cut my hair in about a year, so it seemed like it was about time this weekend. I found a picture I liked in a magazine and off I went. I think I had about 12 inches taken off, maybe an inch or so more, and I love my short new style. What I’m also happy about, though, is that I had enough hair to cut that I was able to have the stylist take off 11 inches at the start, which is more than enough to make a donation to Locks of Love. Locks of Love uses the hair to make hair prosthetics for financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

If you have at least 10 inches of hair you’re thinking about cutting short, I suggest you look into donating to Locks of Love. It’s an easy way to do some good. (And if you have your hair cut at a salon that works with Locks of Love, the haircut may be free.) Information about how to donate your hair, and what types of hair they will accept, can be found here.