MOTHER'S DAY GIVEAWAY/CONTEST

As promised, I'm excited to announce my latest giveaway for Mother's Day! These beautiful "Forget Me Not Earrings" are a new design for my shop, BeadinByTheSea. I thought these would be an appropriate choice as they were one of my mother's favorite flowers and I think of her everytime I see them bloom in the Spring.

Sadly, when I was in my early twenties, I lost my mom to cancer. It was difficult to be without a mother at such a young age especially as I was just beginning a new career and my adult life. Even though it's been almost 20 years since her death, I often think of how much she has influenced my life. I credit her with giving me a love for creativity. She was always trying something new and encouraged me to explore new crafts often bringing me home craft kits to try. I would sit and watch her sew and be fascinated with how things are put together. She taught me how to knit and crochet and played a huge part in fostering my love of sewing which I further pursued by obtaining a degree in Fashion Design.

I miss her dearly and so I dedicate this giveaway to her loving memory.

And now for the contest rules:

1. Leave your name and email address or a link to your blog along with a comment telling me what you love about your Mom. Click on "comments" at the bottom of this post to see the comment box. Comments without contact information will be discarded.

2. Come back on Mother's Day, May 10th to see if you've won.

3. Entries close at 4:00 PM PST.

4. Open worldwide to anyone age 18+.

5. If you can't wait until Mother's Day, these earrings are available for purchase in my shop.

Meanwhile, if you are blessed to still have your Mother, I encourage you to take the time to express to her how much you love and appreciate her!

MOTIVATION MONDAY...TAKE ACTION

Dialogue with my cat:
Ace: "Do you need your computer?"

Me: "Does it keep you warm, my sweet?"

Ace: "Yes it feels nice and it kinda purrs like me"

Me: "Well, Ace, go ahead and relax, I'll get more work done if I don't use the computer anyway."

Don't you wish your pet could talk... or maybe not? They might remind us that we spend way too much time on the computer. It's amazing how fast time goes by when you're surfing the web. There is so much information out there to absorb: news, games to play, social networks to engage in, videos clips to watch, products to research and buy, I could go on and on!

So thanks Ace for the reminder. I think I'll turn this off and go create some more designs for my jewelry shop, clean my house or maybe even go enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.

I found so many quotes about action this morning, here are a couple that I chose:

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.
Joe Dimaggio

The enjoyment of life would be instantly gone if you removed the possibility of doing something.
Chauncey Depew

Have a great Monday!

ROUND AND ROUND

Round and round she goes, when she stops nobody knows.

These earrings I just made yesterday really represent how I feel this week. Between feeding a large group of teenage boys on Tuesdays for youth group, hosting an adult bible study group on Wednesdays, being a wife and mom and keeping tabs on my jewelry shop (3 online venues) sometimes I feel like I'm running in five directions at once. I know most of it is self inflicted but I want to DO IT ALL! Do you feel ever feel like that?

In order for me to stop, I think I need to go somewhere without a computer so I can't find Twitter, Facebook, Etsy, 1000 Markets, ArtFire, Flickr, and Blogger. I know I would twitch for a while but pretty soon I might find time to relax and even escape into a good book. Well, maybe a good "Learn a New Jewelry Technique" or "How to grow your online business" book. Would that be a good compromise?

DRUM ROLL PLEASE...

I am so excited about the response I received to my second "Where in the World Giveaway Contest"! I received 199 comments in all which is an almost fourfold increase over my first contest. I also want to thank those that wrote lovely compliments about my jewelry.

Okay, first the answer. The photo was taken at Kilauea Lighthouse in Kauai, Hawaii. There were quite a few that guessed correctly. I guess the photo is not close-up enough to show the tropical vegetation because many of the entries guessed Ireland and Maine. If you'd like more information on this beautiful place here is the link to the website.

I thought it would be fitting to use this gorgeous hand turned bowl that I received as a gift from our friend Nathan to hold all 199 numbers . My son drew the winning number once again.

And now here is the lucky number:141

After much counting back and forth I've found the 141st entry: joannaonthelake

Congratulations Joanna! Not only will you find out where this picture was taken, but you'll be receiving this lovely necklace!

Again, I like to thank all of those who participated. I'm planning on having another giveaway to be drawn on May 10th, Mother's Day so keep checking back. In the meantime I can make more "Island Girl" necklaces if you'd like to purchase one. You may visit my shop Beadin' By The Sea by clicking here or the picture of the necklace to go directly to the listing.

Have a great Saturday everyone and Happy Easter too!

FINGERPRINT GOOD FRIDAY

It's Good Friday today and as a Christian, I can't think of a more obvious fingerprint from God than the story of salvation: God's love for the world, God's gift of His only Son Jesus, and the opportunity for anyone who believes to be saved. There are many to whom this is not obvious but they are entitled to their opinion and hopefully will respect mine.

This is one of the most quoted salvation scriptures from John 3:16 that sums it up perfectly:

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

We'll be attending Good Friday services tonight. These services are usually pretty somber and difficult for me as I think about the pain and suffering Jesus went through to carry out His Father's plan. The mood will be much more joyous 3 days from now when we attend Resurrection Sunday Services (Easter) to celebrate His victory over death.

Receiving good news is so much easier isn't it? We always want to hear the happy stuff. On Good Friday, we are called to remember the Cost which makes the Victory that much sweeter.

So look around you and see where YOU can see God's fingerprints. Is it in nature? Kids? Animals? Where do you see them? Thank you to Pampering Beki for hosting this each week! Everyone is welcome to join. To see how to join, as well as find links to other Fingerprint Friday posts, visit Pampering Beki's blog.

EARRING CARDS REVISITED

I love it when you ask me questions, especially ones that I can answer! One of my most popular posts is a tutorial on "How to Make Your Own Earrings Cards". I noticed that there was a comment from "Anonymous" asking me if I had any ideas on how to hang hoops on the cards. I have a couple of ideas but the one I'm going to share is very fast and easy.

A link to the original post, the addition of this picture and a few simple instructions should be enough to get you on your way.

1. Lay your hoops with the top end just covering the the top hole.
2. Mark with pencil where the bottom of the hoop lands.
3. Use a 1/4" hand punch to punch a hole over the center dot.

Your hoops will be secure in the top hole and be able to freely hang within the larger bottom hole. This also works well for leverback earrings. Use the larger hole on the bottom in the same way so the leverback can hang unhindered.

That's it! Any more questions?

CLEAN YOUR WINDOWS...

Because you never know what you'll see wander in your backyard. Yep, my husband cleaned the windows last weekend and I was glad because I wouldn't have been able to snap this crystal clear photo. Click on the photo to make it large. As soon as I opened the sliding glass door to take another, off the deer bounded to hide.

We've had such beautiful weather the past few days and I've seen lots of wildlife activity in the woods behind me from squirrels, hummingbirds, various others birds and now deer. Back to drizzle and clouds today. Such is living in the Pacific Northwest. Are you seeing signs of Spring in your part of the world?

Oh, and have you cleaned your windows lately? The world seems so much brighter and sunnier when you can see through them.

SWEETNESS OF SMALL...

Or how about itty bitty? I have to admit that lately I've been thinking small, well at least with some of my jewelry designs that is! I've been adding to my collection of clay cutters and I just received some flower shapes. The charms below are PMC pieces before being fired and they range from about 3/16" to 5/8". The larger flowers are going to be made into earrings but the rest will be put on hoops made from Argentium Sterling Silver wire.


And here are the small flowers after being fired, tumbled and oxidized. Sweet!

So now I have hearts, dots and flowers. I think stars may be next. What kind of shapes do you like? Do you tend to wear chunky jewelry or like to keep things small? I'd love to hear your input in the comments below.

FINGERPRINT FRIDAY

You think I'm going to talk about tulips today don't you? Well, the Skagit Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon has started, but my fingerprint today is about friendship. Just like the bunch of tulips in this vase, God has a way of bringing people together from diverse backgrounds, ages, experiences and walks of life that is amazing. We host a small church group in our home on Wednesdays nights and every week I am reminded that God has given each of us unique gifts and puts people in our paths to stretch us, help us learn, to love and lean on each other.

An excerpt from 1 Corinthians 12: 26-27 about one body, many parts:

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Who has God put in your path this week that you can rejoice with, cry with, learn from or encourage this week?

So look around you and see where YOU can see God's fingerprints. Is it in nature? Kids? Animals? Where do you see them? Thank you to Pampering Beki for hosting this each week! Everyone is welcome to join. To see how to join, as well as find links to other Fingerprint Friday posts, visit Pampering Beki's blog.

DON'T FORGET...

Ace is here to say Hi and remind you to enter my giveaway that will be ending April 11th, 2009. You'll find the details by clicking here.

Otherwise have a great Wednesday. I'm busy creating and thinking of new ideas for my blog! Okay, I'll admit I think I have writer's cramp! If you have anything you'd like to see more of feel free to comment below.

Photo manipulation done using Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0