Handmade Giveaway: Tickled Pink Knits

November 19, 2010

**Each weekend through Christmas, I’ll be offering giveaway’s from artists and artisans with a simple wish that we can all support handmade this holiday season! Enjoy!

This weekend's giveaway is from a shop that I have grown to love, love, love! I'm wearing the cowl above right now, and I'm so super warm:)

Tickled Pink Knits offers luxurious handmade knitwear and accessories (scarves, wraps, cowls, hats, mitts, and fiber jewelry), all made from fine natural materials (alpaca, merino wool, cashmere, silk, and fine cottons) featuring all original designs, each piece of wearable fiber art is created one stitch at a time by Elena Rosenberg in her New York-based studio. Wedding accessories orders (shawls/wraps) and other custom orders are always welcomed.

Visit Elena here:

GIVEAWAY DESCRIPTION:

This week, there will be THREE lucky winners! One winner will receive a gift certificate to her shop, and two winners will receive a free knitting pattern. In addition to that, Tickled Pink Knits is offering FREE SHIPPING to all Sarah Jane readers. Coupon Code (in message to seller) is SARAHJANE.

Giveaway instructions:

Leave a comment making sure to enter your name and email where it asks you to
Comments will be closed on Sunday Nov. 21st at Midnight EST
THREE winners will be chosen
Winners will be contacted via email

Best of luck to you!

Books You'll Love: Christmas is Here

November 17, 2010

Ok! It's time to start reviewing Christmas Picture books! I can't wait. We have LOTS around here, and I have to tell you about my new favorite.

Just out this year, Christmas is Here is illustrated by one of my new favorite illustrators, Lauren Castillo. Maybe you've seen some other books of hers. This book is a favorite in our house. Her style is so fresh and different than anything else we have in the house, which is so attractive to me. My kids love her books, and will look at her illustrations so closely. Though they are loose and naive in a sense, the illustrations almost seem to move and come alive. I love it.

So, Christmas Is Here is super special because it is the text from the Bible! Straight from Luke, this is the story that most families read every night on Christmas Eve as they are acting out the nativity. I have never realized up until this point, that I've never seen a picture book depict the Biblical text before! And only the text...no add-ins, or summaries. The first few pages are wordless, because it starts with a family walking past a live nativity, and the rest is the little boy imagining the first Christmas as it is being read aloud to him. So precious.

So, I see a Christmas Tradition starting: Reading this book at Christmas around the tree. We're starting our Christmas reading on the 1st, and I am so happy this is part of our collection!

This is a new favorite, because it's the story that we all know and share. It's also really dear to me, because the book that I illustrated, Christmas Goodnight coming NEXT Christmas, has some similarities that were fun to notice too.

You can get Lauren's book here .

And let me mention too, that Lauren is taking a trip to Romania where she is giving away 500 books to orphan children this Christmas. It's even being translated in Romanian! But to help with the funds, Lauren is donating 100% of her ETSY shop sales to the cause. You can visit her lovely site here, and know that for every print you get, a child will be getting a picture book of the biblical story of Christmas!

Thanks Lauren for this wonderful book! Hope you all enjoy.

Birds get fast food.

November 15, 2010

So the conversation started like this:

IAN: Where do earffworms go in the winter, Mom?

ME: Um, I don't know. I think they freeze. Or maybe they hibernate. I'll read about it.

IAN: What do birds eat in the winter then?

ME: Well, they find whatever they can.

IAN: Ok. I'll start collecting.

1/2 hour later Ian comes to get me with his collection pictured above:

IAN: Look mom. This is for the birds to eat in the winter!

ME: Oh! That's great! There's one problem though. Birds don't eat rocks. Or flower petals. Maybe we can collect something else.

IAN: Like what? How can we feed them mom? The earffworms will freeeee-eeee-eeze (insert hyper shivering child here).

ME: Hey, I know...let's talk to Dad when he gets home, and maybe we can have a family project to build a bird feeder this weekend. We can go to the store...and...

IAN: Is Dad home yet? I'll wait on the porch.

4 hours later:

Evidently, Kenneth didn't even get to come inside the house. While I was getting Ella up from her nap, I came out on the back porch to see this. The man was building before he even had time to put his bag down.

OK. Don't freak out and send me hate mail. Yes, my almost 5 year old is inches away from a scary blade...of course he was never close to it while it was on. He was in charge of marking the wood. But we're of the school of thought that if you teach children young, they understand danger and how to act around it. Ian learned how to saute onions on the stove at age three, for instance...attended by an adult of course. But anyways....I have to cover myself because, you know, this is the internet and I've been sent hate mail for things like having my 1 year old in point shoes. Anyways...I digress....

So what I thought was going to turn into a fun weekend long project, took exactly an hour. We had scrap fence pieces laying around, and some tools to boot.

It got quite loud...but never boring.

Ken built a little hinged rooftop so we could pour the seed in and out easily. And the large tray would allow multiple birds to eat at the same time. (We have some big birds around here, and the last thing I wanted was to encourage fighting. Can you tell I'm a mom of 3 children under 5?)

And Voila. A simple solution to frozen earthworms.

It took a about 3 days for the birds to figure out it was there, and to come often. Now, we have birds we've never even seen before! Namely the really tiny ones that stay hidden. I'm going to have to start learning more about birds now...and it makes me so happy. Ella yells, "Ba! Ba!" and the children have learned to stop talking (yelling) at breakfast when they see the birds in the feeder so they don't scare them away.

Perfect. I'm starting to feel ready for winter already. We're keeping the birds happy in our corner of the earth. Or at least we're keeping the birds close to us so we can feel there is still life when winter erases most of it away. Either way, I'm happy.

Giveaway: The English Pea

November 12, 2010

**Each weekend through Christmas, I’ll be offering giveaway’s from artists and artisans with a simple wish that we can all support handmade this holiday season! Enjoy!

This weekend's giveaway comes from the English Pea. TheEnglish Pea Studio offers a vibrant line of stationery and prints for children. From cute bagtags to bookplates to holiday gift tags you can find anything to tickle your little one's fancy.

I'm thinking this giveaway couldn't come at a better time! Wanting to get that personalized stationery in for the holidays is just where I'm at right now.

You can find the English Pea on her blog, website and facebook.

GIVEAWAY DESCRIPTION:

THREE lucky winners will receive a choice of any ONE item in the shop! Perfect for getting ready for the holiday season! In addition to that, The English Pea is offering a 15% discount to all Sarah Jane readers through the end of the month. Coupon Code (in message to seller) is SARAHJANE.

Giveaway instructions:

leave a comment making sure to enter your name and email where it asks you to
comments will be closed on Sunday Nov. 14th at Midnight EST
THREE winners will be chosen to receive ONE item of their choice
Winners will be contacted via email

Best of luck to you!

Tammis Keefe

November 11, 2010

For the short 2 days I was at Quilt Market, I got to spend a few hours on the floor helping Michael Miller set up their massive booth. The booth had this MadMen Vintage theme, complete with 1960's runway of manakins. It was seriously awesome. As I rolled up my sleeves to get my hands dirty, I noticed these retro panels off to the side, waiting to be assembled. As I got closer, I realized they were Tammis Keefe Hankerchief's with a complete tribute to her life and story. Do you know Tammis Keefe? She was legendary in textile design for hankerchief's in the 1950's. Her eye for color and design is still recognizable, and she has inspired hundreds of artists and designers. She has a rather sad and mysterious life, which you can read more about here. But she died young, and her images were basically just sitting there, not being reproduced or used. But now, Michael Miller is reproducing her artwork in yardage now, and I am so incredibly excited!

Don't you just love her work? I am really fascinated by trends, and what they bring out in artists of the times. I think trends are so telling of all aspects of the culture that an artist is a part of, and I love thinking about why certain things are popular and why. So I love seeing her original work, and sensing why it was so popular then, and why it is so popular now.

Here's the fabric yardage that Michael Miller has made from her hankies. I can't wait to get my hands on it!

It was really cool to see the original hankies, with individual designs on them, and then how Michael Miller put them together to make awesome fabric.

(Photos from True Up)

And here is a video clip of the set up of the Michael Miller booth. It's really so awesome that I get to actually work with these crazy and fun people. I love this industry! You can see Sandi Henderson show off her red wig and me struggling to put up the Tammis Keefe panel with glue and string at about 1:15 into it.

So do you know Tammis Keefe's work? To learn more, you can go here,here and here. I'm just loving it.

Please support handmade.

November 9, 2010

I got an email from Mahar Dry goods last week with very sad news. They are closing their doors after 5 wonderful years in business. And I am very, very depressed.

Mahar Dry Goods was one of the first online shops that actually got me excited about opening my ETSY shop. Robert has stocked exclusively handmade, unique, modern yet vintage children's goods. It always made me so happy to go browse through his shop, and just this year, Mahar Dry Goods picked up some of our family trees and paper dolls. But, as I very well know, keeping a shop up is a lot of work. It looks all clean and neat on the screen, but there are a lot of things that go into the business of keeping up a business. Especially when you are a one-person start-up. And so I am so sad to see Robert's shop close it's doors. It makes me think of all the handmade-make-it-happen-with-your-boot-straps-businesses out there, and all the love and heart that goes into starting something like this. There are rough times for sure! And though I am shocked and very sad to see his shop close down, I also know that it makes me want to support handmade even more. So many of us are making it happen with little or no outside help, and yet have wonderful, amazing, inspired products that need to be out there.

So, I have to mention at least a positive that is happening with all this: Mahar Dry Goods will be open through the holiday season, and with the closeout, there is plenty, plenty on sale that you'll want to get your hands on for Christmas.

So, this is my "support handmade" cheer. Go check out his shop. Do shop handmade this season. Do click on my sponsor column to the right. Go and browse ETSY before hitting the mall. Think of how you can be supporting a young mother who wants to stay at home with her children, and so opened a shop selling personalized paper dolls. Shop handmade, please. Right now, I am wearing a cowl from Tickled Pink Knits, and it makes me so happy to be wearing something I know someone made with their own hands...and that I'm helping them keep their love of knitting alive. So, are you shopping handmade this Season? I am.

I'm getting off my soap box now. But I'm off to Christmas shop here.

Making an Art Gallery in Chicago.

November 8, 2010

Do you remember this post from way back when? Gosh, it was like two years ago...so Addie and Ian were only 2 and 3 years old. I had all this art that my babies had made (finger painting art to be exact) and I didn't know what to do with it. I'd read blog post after blog post on how to store your kids art, digitize it, etc. But I wanted to USE their art, but didn't know how. SO I came up with this ART GALLERY idea. I drew up stencils and traced them onto their finger painting art, and cut them out. Then we framed them, hung them on the wall, and had an instant art gallery of my kids work. Every time people came to visit, they always commented on our Gallery wall. It was so fun to look at! And since then, it's become the most downloaded post on my blog (maybe cause I don't have that much to download....working on that!)

But, I bring this up, because Chicago's local news station did a demo of how to make your own ART GALLERY with your children's art, and they used my blog post and templates for the demo! (Sorry folks...I couldn't figure out how to embed the video, but you can watch the clip if you click here. The demo is the second half of the program at the 2:31 mark).

It was kinda surreal to watch someone half way across the country share with local Chicago viewers, something that I came up with with on a whim while two toddlers crawled all over me on a normal wednesday morning....and I just thought, "Hey, this would be fun to blog about." It just made me realize that the normal things that we do each day can help inspire someone else to find more enjoyment in their daily living. That's what I love about blogging. To me, cutting out animals onto finger-painted paper was just another thing to do on a quiet wednesday morning. And it was! Not that spectacular. But to someone else, that's an idea that they might not have ever had if they didn't go read about it. And so I guess it makes me happy to think that somewhere in Chicago there's another mother cutting out finger-painted paper, while her toddlers climb lovingly all over her, to create a little art gallery from her own children's precious fingers. It really made me think about how far reaching the little things we do each day can be. I love how this world turns. And I love sharing in the turning.

To find the templates to make your own, click here.

Happy Monday friends!

Giveaway: Dotty by Julia Denos

November 5, 2010

Do you remember the Picture Book post I did a while back about Dotty? It was I think the most popular post of that month, and I had so many of you email me thanking me for the review, as well as people who mentioned that they loved it just as much and went out and bought it. Horray! I love that. Especially as an illustrator myself, I love sharing wonderful experiences that picture books offer!

So I thought to myself, I am just going to contact Julia (the illustrator) and see if I can't do a giveaway? What the heck...the internet is a nice and friendly world right?...and it doesn't hurt to ask.

Well, a few days after asking about it, I got this sweet package in the mail with TWO autographed books complete with sketch of Dotty and set of 4 stickers. AH! I need to tell you that if I wasn't an honest person, I would be keeping them for myself!!! These are so precious! Really...this is one of my new favorite pictures books.

Dotty is the story of Ida who goes to first day of school with her imaginary friend Dotty. But it's just as well, since the rest of her class has imaginary friends too. As the year wears on, Ida realizes that the rest of the kids have "grown up" and think imaginary friends are for babies, and Ida is put in a tough spot because she still has Dotty. This picture book explores the emotions and playfulness of children with big imaginations, and has a VERY satisfying ending. You can read more of my review here.

Julia is a darling person. I've follwed her blog for a while, and I think you'll just fall in love with her work! She's working on some really great books right now, and I can't wait to get hands on all of them.

Here's a little about her:

Julia is a recently married illustrator living in Quincy, Massachusetts just outside of Boston where she graduated with a B.F.A. in illustration from the Art institute of Boston at Lesley. She worked in a flower shop, followed by a children's bookstore where she was working when she landed her first job in 2007. Since then, she's illustrated 8 books for children, with several more on the way. Her 8th book, coming out in Janury looks delightful: what a dream to illustrate a Picture book on Audrey Hepburn!! So jealous.

She has a darling studio apt in Quincy which is gorgeous, with plenty of natural light!

She is just a darling person, and I've been so happy to get to know the person behind the books that my children love so much. You can get to know her a lot better here on this wonderfully thorough interview. Thanks so much Julia for this great giveaway!