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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New Year! New Contests! New Features! New Art!

I hope you all had a wonderful and safe Holiday Season! Tomorrow starts the first day of the workweek of the new year but before you have to trudge out into the cold and get back to work, I thought I would let you in on some of the things I have planned for you in 2010. (It's a nice round number, Monk would love it, but we said good-bye to him last year, now only reruns and rented DVD's. :( )

So are you ready?

I am going to try to keep to a schedule, but can't promise it completely because I don't know what's in store for me this year, I hop..........................................e good things ( excuse the interruption, as I was typing ' I hope good things' one of my doves crashed into the window right next to where I am sitting and startled me quite a bit. The Dove is OK, my neck is not so much, I hope that isn't a sign of things to come ?).

Ok, so back to my plans.

I have always loved photography, in my younger years I took a few classes, collected books, did some amateur work for weddings and some modeling shoots but my main love was always to capture the beauty of nature around me. Still life's of nature around me or action shots of animals filled most of my photo boxes. Since switching from my SLR Canon to a digital it's taken me awhile to get back into that because it seems I am always doing shoots for my shops but because I mainly shot near a window for natural light, what's going on outside doesn't escape my eye and I usually find my download intermingled with non art shots. I am thankful for digital for one thing, I can take as many shots as I want and not waste any money on film or developing! And so it is not odd for me to end up with more non shop items than not. Only thing that stops me is a low battery with non on recharge!

So, what does that have to do with you? Well I was looking through some of my recent photos the other day and thought, what could I do with these? I wanted to find a way to share them with you without having to devote a whole blog post to them ( I would never live long enough to do so! ) But thought of a way to share them with you to make it enjoyable!

Each week I will be posting a Mystery Picture - Goal Mystery Monday, to help you get your week off to a good start. You will have until the following Sunday night at 9pm EST to identify what the picture is. Yes that is the mystery! Now there is a contest attached as well! A bit different than other blog contests and different than others I will have. Since this is a mystery you can't post your guess on the blog then others would see. So, what's the solution? almost as easy. Stop by every Monday and take a look at the new photo. You have all week to ponder over it and when you think you have an answer just click on my About me avatar ( my green nasturtium leaf ) and that will take you to my Google Blogger user page. On the left hand side under Contact, just click on my email and send me your guess!

One winner each week will be drawn from all the correct entries. But your name won't be discarded from that group each week but added to the next weeks drawing IF you participate in that Mystery Monday and have a correct answer.

Example: Week 1 your guess is correct and entered into the drawing. Your name isn't drawn. You come back the following week, make another correct guess on the new mystery photo and now you have two entries into that weeks drawing. Even if you win that week, if you come back the third week and guess correctly you will have the first entry added to that weeks chance. So the object is to keep coming each week and make a guess.

You don't have to do anything else. You can choose to blog about it, or tweet it, or even write a blurb about it on Facebook and share, that is great, but you don't have to, I leave that up to you to share out of the goodness of your heart, not to gain you an entry. ( at least not on this contest). I would advise however that you become a follower if you aren't already and then you will be reminded when you go to your dashboard or reader each week when you see my post, so you won't forget!

So that's one of the fun things I've planned for this year, what, Oh, what was that, you want a prize if you win? Well fancy that! :) Of course I have something for your time and effort (besides the fun of the mystery), each week there will be a gift certificate for your choice of pre-selected items from one of my shops. Pre-selected because they will have something in common with the mystery photo, but not always obvious! But fun. And there will always be a choice so you will want to participate each week.

What else do I have planned? Another ongoing feature will be a post on a regular basis (not sure of the timing yet, once or twice a month perhaps) with the subject being Crafting Boo-Boos. There are many blogs I've visited that have tutorials on how to make this and how to make that but one thing I've found lacking is a source for how not to make this or how not to do that. This is a niche I think I can fill in many art and crafting areas since I have tried many of them and want to share what I've learned through my mistakes. I don't like wasting time and thought you could better spend the time you have for creating Art and being better prepared. I will also be sharing with you any other gems like this from others trial and errors so you can build a library of bookmarks to read up on what not to do before you spend your precious time and money on a project. I will try and include photos where possible or if need be a hand drawn sketch for you to follow.

Anything else? I will be trying to share with you this year more about Organic Living, with sources, recipes and ideas on how to incorporate more blessings from nature into your life. I will also be running an ongoing feature Called Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? No, it's not twenty questions, but twenty facts about one of those natural things each week. I hope this will help you to make more informed choices with your food dollar in the grocery store each week and also if planning a garden.

I will be working on some new lines of jewelry and jewelry components (for StudioARTBEAD) that I will announce here before putting in my shop. I plan on working on a new theme for each month. This month is "Ring in the New Year"! Stay tuned to see what that is all about!

Also there will be some great New Jewelry and Polymer Clay book reviews coming soon!

There's more in store, but that is just to whet your appetite, so I hope you'll join me each week and let's have a great year together! And don't forget to come back tomorrow to see what the first Mystery Photo is!


I'll give you a hint, it's GREEN!

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