And The Winner Is...

 The lucky winner of Lyric Kinard's DVD Bead It Like You Mean It is...

(please use your imagination to hear the drum roll...)


  Robbie!

Congratulations Robbie.  Please contact me via email to send me your mailing address and we'll get the DVD out to you.  If you were not the lucky winner, you can click here to purchase this wonderful DVD.

Thanks for dropping by today.

Great Beading DVD Give-Away

 Computer gremlins have caused the images in this post to disappear.  Sorry!

If you've seen some of my heavily encrusted beaded pieces of art, you'll know that I'm a bit addicted to beads (and if you haven't, click on the BJP 2012 tab at the top of the page).  When I first decided to join the Bead Journal Project back in December, I treated myself to a copy of Lyric Kinard's Bead It Like You Mean It DVD so I could get some more information and inspiration.  I am a self taught beader and thought it might be a good idea to learn a few things about how to bead to get the results I was seeking and how to make sure I was securing the beads so that they wouldn't start coming off later on.  I worried about my heavily encrusted pieces starting to fall apart over time. LOL

The other day, as I was planning to start my March BJP piece, I pulled the DVD out again and reviewed it.  I love Lyric's clear and easy manner of speaking.  Its like having her sitting with you in your family room.  The DVD has great visuals and its easy to see what Lyric is talking about as she demonstrates it with great close-up shots of her work as she repeats the stitches to make sure that you really understand.

Lyric explains beading terminology and covers many topics from testing for colour-fastness (never would have thought of that for glass beads!), to needles, threads, and beads themselves. Bead It Like You Mean It is 90 minutes long, divided into 7 chapters.  One of my favourite chapters taught me how to make fun bead cages (the inspiration for the binder cover I made for myself).

close-up

Binder Cover: Shisha mirrors
secured with beaded cases.

Another great tip is how to embellish a finished quilt top, working from the top of a finished quilt without making a mess of the back of the quilt with knots and travelling threads.

Bead It Like You Mean It is full of good tips and tricks to make beading fun (read addictive) and even portable.

Here are some images of Lyric's work from the DVD:

Beautiful lines ending in fun spirals

 -what a wonderful way to 

embellish a quilt.

Don't you love the texture of these

 beads mixed with the stitch!

I love these wonderful bead stacks!

Lyric's bead cages capture her
lovely cabochons.

Watch this short video clip to get a peek at Lyric's easy, down to earth teaching style.

Want to win a copy of this great DVD?  Lyric has generously offered to provide me with a copy of the DVD so that I can give it to one of my wonderful followers (that's you!).  Leave me a comment by the end of the day on Sat. March 24th, telling me why you just have to have this beading DVD and what your beading goals are.
Want a second chance to win? If you have a blog, put a post on your blog with a link to this give-away (and leave me a comment linking to your post) and you'll get a second chance to win! 

I will post the winner's name on Sunday, March 25th.  Good Luck!

Putting My Personal Touch Into Digital Scrapbooking and a Give Away

Want to win some scrap-booking software?  Please read on...
In addition to the art and photography you see here on my blog, I have also started to do some digital scrapbooking and making photo books to celebrate milestones and special vacations.  When I was given the opportunity to check out a scrapbook software called My Memories Suite I decided to download it and give it a try.  I discovered that it's easy to use and I was able to  create these two pages quickly and easily.  The best part was that I was able to import my own background papers (the top one is a scanned image of one of the ones I recently made using stencils and paints, and the musical notes page was downloaded from Free Vintage Papers blog, a blog that offers free digi-papers and digi-stamps.  Look for Pamela's link on the right).


Of course My Memories Suite comes with it's own theme packs including backgrounds, layouts, and lots of fun extra like brads, buttons and ribbons so that you can simply drag-and-drop your pictures into the beautiful layouts they provide. Notice that fun thought bubble on the above page? That was as simply as clicking on the photo and then selecting the shape.  The software does the rest!  In addition to the themes that come with the software, there are additional theme packs available on their website for purchase at reasonable prices and there are also a bunch of them that are free!

So, here's the exciting part.  The folks at MyMemory Suite have given me an extra FREE copy for me to give away to one of my lucky readers (that's you!).  Here's what you need to do for a chance to win:

1. Go to MyMemories Suite and take a look at the theme packs;
2. Sign up to be a follower on my blog (or let me know if you already are a follower;
3. Leave a comment, letting me know which theme pack is your personal favourite.

Please sign up to follow my blog and leave your comment before the end of Friday, March 30th.  A winner will be randomly selected and announced in a blog post on Saturday, March 31st.  The winner will then have 5 days in which to contact me with their email address so that I can send them the necessary code to download the software at no cost.

For those of you who can't wait, you can use this code STMMMS18464 for a $10 discount on the purchase of MyMemory Suite (you get it for $29.95 instead of $39.95) AND you'll get an additional $10 gift certificate to use in their online store.  Simply copy & paste STMMMS18464 into the promo code box on the shopping cart page.  Use the link near the top of this page, on the right side, or click here.