Thoughtful Thursday

Welcome to Thoughtful Thursday. I hope I have some things that will make your life easier, save you some time and money and bring something to your attention that you didn't know about but are happy to discover!

Of interest to Jewelry Makers And PC & PMC Artists

Michael's sales this week include Premo! Sculpey and Fimo Polymer Clay 4 for $5!!!!! Stock up now Clayers, that's a great deal. Also 40% off Gold, Silver, Platinum and Rose Gold findings for all your fine Jewelry creations. And 30% off big selection of Bead Gallery Collection and Natural Elegance components.

Hobby Lobby has Liquitex Acrylic tube paints and mediums 30% off. I use these myself as they bond with the polymer clay very well and their mediums can be used for all types of art applications. Also Artists, pencils, pens and markers 30% off.

And Jewelry makers, for you, Traditions, Explorer and Natural Gallery Jewelry components, 50% off! there's lots more jewelry components too including Czech Beads and Swavroski Crystals.
Jen Judds is having a giveaway to celebrate the ABS Blogging Carnival I talked to you about yesterday. She has some awesome Lampwork Beads from Lisa New as well as some other great bead artists. Just visit her blog on this post and leave a comment including your favorite Bead Artists (I won't mind if you name drop StudioARTBEAD ;) )

Lark Books (I'm sure you have at least one if not more of their books, I have 3 of these 4 myself) is looking for submissions for 30 minute rings. Yes that's right, from start to finish, only 30 minutes.

Jewelry Design Challenge: 30-Minute Rings
Editor: Marthe Le Van
Entry Deadline: March 19, 2010

Are you a skilled and imaginative jewelry designer who is up for a challenge? Great! Your mission is to design a ring that can be made…start to finish…in 30 minutes flat. Sound fun? We think so.

30-Minute Rings will showcase more than 50 incredibly stylish step-by-step projects that can be created without investing too much of a valuable commodity—time! The selected ring designs will be modern and sophisticated and encompass many different styles and techniques. The common denominator will be fast projects that look terrific!

PS: In 30-Minute Rings, we won’t be teaching fundamental jewelry making techniques. Designers can assume that their readers are already proficient (and quick!) at skills such as sawing, soldering, and finishing.

Visit This page for Submission Guidelines

Love Books? Great purses? How's this for Spring? I love this soft coral color and the texture with all that weaving of leather and the medallion on the bottom is cool too! This is an Elliot Lucca Bag and you could win this AND a bag full of Books to read from HarperCollins, worth over $455.00

Yes, this beautiful bag could be yours and the latest fiction from Harper Collins, all you have to do is GO HERE and enter to win. Elliot Lucca can be seen on HSN and if you sign up to be alerted by email when he'll be on next, any time in February you will automatically be entered into a drawing to win a $100 HSN gift certificate.

So what if you don't win the purse full of books, and you really LOVE BOOKS? If you've been reading my blog I'd make a guess that you do. :) After introducing you to BookCrossing last week, as cool as that is, and I love a treasure hunt I got to thinking about Book swapping. Why couldn't there be a place where you could swap the books you have for books you want? So I went online and found, much to my happy surprise, there not only is such a thing but many choices out there. Now I haven't tried any of these yet so if any of you have please leave a comment and share! But I will be looking into these deeper and see which ones I'd like to join.

Here's a quick rundown on the ones I discovered.

SwapTree -

• Trade the books you have for the books you want, for FREE
• Swap your books for video games, CDs and DVDs
• Instantly see all the books you can receive in trade
• Print perfect postage right from your computer
• Discover new books and authors
• Recycle, reuse and reduce your carbon footprint

So, more than just books, but CD's and DVD's games and probably Book on tape. You can follow them for updates on Twitter. And here's an interview with the co-founder on TIME online Magazine. And a quote from the article:

There's a staggering amount of stuff ready for the swapping: Swaptree currently has about 2.5 million items listed for trade, and the number of users doubles every four months.

The best part is that Swaptree does most of the work for you; after you set up a "have list" and a "want list," the site automatically lists all of the permutations—including complicated triple trades—that'll hook you up with your picks. And it's free. You only pay for shipping, and you can do that for a couple of bucks via media mail at the post office.

Read more: http://money.blogs.time.com/2009/06/19/qa-with-the-co-founder-of-swaptree-com/#ixzz0fwPEDiFD

AND you can even print out postage from their site, so this sounds like one I will be signing up for!

Here's another.............................

PaperBack Swap
Want a quick run down? Watch this very short video. This sounds like another I'd like to try. Here's the link to the site too!



And here's one more to get you started:

BookMooch , they just recently were written up on this article by ABC news. They work on a points system explained here . Basically you have to send out 1 book for each 2 you receive. You can even share your points with charities they work with. Worth checking out.

Logo artwork courtesy of BookMooch.com

So there you have it, three great places to join to get free books, and not just any books, but the ones you want and you get to clean house at the same time and save lots of money and who couldn't stand to do that nowadays?

Remember that they have Children's books, cook books, Biographies, History, Fiction, Sci-Fi, Travel, Everything you could find at your local book store, library and more! Not only does this help you save money, but space (clear off those bulging bookcases!) but it also, and this is my favorite, helps you to be very green, save trees by sharing your books and giving them a new home while you still can read all you want!

Try Book Swapping today, I'm sure you'll be hooked! And I'm sure I will be writing more on this later!
Hope this gives you some fun things to investigate today! Have fun and let me know what you think!

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