I have a blog crush.  Actually, I have a few blog crushes and I’ve decided to share them with you because there’s so many wonderful blogs out there that you should be reading regularly.   To start I’m going to tell you about a wonderful Australian blog that is offering a week of paper based goodness.

Calico & Co is run by the talented and amazing Amanda Fuller.  It’s a great repository of wonderful handmade goodness and design love.  When I stumbled across Calico & Co I spent a good few hours trawling through all of Amanda’s post and ohhing and ahhing over the wonderful images.  It was amazing.

This week Amanda has kicked of the inaugural Paper Week.  That’s right – a week devoted entirely to PAPER!  I love it!

Image source: Calico & Co

Every day this week Amanda will be offering a paper giveaway.  I’ve already entered today’s giveaway and I plan to enter everyday this week.

If you love beautiful design and photography go check out Calico & Co -  you won’t be disappointed.

Megan @ Simple Pleasures

Thank you to all who took the time to read, comment and enter.  Your lovely comments mean the world. Thank you!

I’m a little late with my Creative Space this week, but I’m hoping you’ll forgive me when you see what I’ve been working on.

Lately I’ve been really moved by some of the embroidery that I’ve been seeing on the great creative blogs out there.  I’m especially crushing on Carina’s Craftblog.  Which is lucky because Carina has published a wonderful ebook on embroidery.  I purchased the book on Thursday night and I’ve been searching for a way to use it ever since.

I hit the jackpot when I stumbled on to the blog Feeling Stitchy.  It’s a massively wonderful resource for all things stitched.  I fell in love with so many of the projects on there but I still wasn’t sure what to do so I went looking for more inspiration.

I was lucky enough to come across Vintage Transfer Finds and there I fell in love with this little birdie.  I stitched it up in no time and I’m so proud of it.  I even managed to do my first french knot and it worked!

I’m so smitten with it.  I decided to turn it into a little coin purse based on the tutorial on Cat Taylor which I found through the very amazing Creative Space by Megan at Simple Pleasures.

I used some of the new fabric I picked up this week at Addicted to Fabric and lined it with a bright purple just for something fun.

So what do you think?  I’m thinking that it would be a great little giveaway to one lucky commenter.  So if you’d like a little blue bird to keep your change happy just leave a comment on this post letting me know where you’d take the blue bird on your adventures.  Comments will be closed at 8pm AEST on Tuesday 9 March 2010.

Everyday I read through hundreds of posts and I see some pretty amazing things.  Things that make me laugh.  Things that make me crave.  Things that make me think the world is a better place.  Things that just make me go “WTF?!?!”.  So I thought I’d start sharing those things with you all in a little spot I like to call “Link Love”.

So here goes:

• From the style icon that is Design*Sponge comes Living In.  It’s a series of collections based on movies.  Every week I marvel at how they manage to put them together.  I wouldn’t even know where to start!  But this week I positively bounced in my seat.  It’s Living In: Labyrinth.  OMG!!!  One of my all time favourite movies.   If I was the kind of girl to *squee* I would have *squeed* all over the house.  I’m totally crushing on the Iron Crown.
• “Practice Random Kindness & Senseless Acts of Beauty” Whenever I need a mood boost I just head on over to Kind Over Matter and I’m immediately in a better frame of mind.  So imagine my joy and surprise to find out that this week is Random Acts of Kindness Week (15 – 21 February).  I’m not sure how I’m going to mark the occasion, but I’m going to do it somehow, someway.  So stay tuned.
• Sunday Sweets – Normally I head on over to Cake Wrecks to check out the devastating horror that is professional cake decorating at it’s worst.  Oh, and to piss myself laughing.  But I just couldn’t stop myself from going “awwwwww…” when I saw this post.  As Dolly Parton said in Steel Magnolias, “… just too cha-cha for words!”  (I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it seemed appropriate…)  Of course I did also manage to get a laugh out of the rest of the weeks wrecks.  Can anyone tell me what this isn’t supposed to be? (From this post.)
• I also found something this week that I found impressive, but too impressive to try at home… so far.  This “I Love You” Cake from the blog of Confections of a (Closet) Master Baker.   While I love the idea of writing messages in food I don’t think I would have the time, the patience or the equipment to make this masterpiece.  Although, with that being said all I’d probably need was the liberal encouragements of Alivicwil and a few trips to Annie’s Cake Place and I’d be willing to attempt it.
• Apparently there’s a little thing called the Winter Olympics happening at the moment… if you, like me, are not into sport but love a good winter woolen than you need to check out “The Great Canadian Mitten Giveaway” happening over at Cafe Cartolina.  Just a warning though, you’ll have to come up with some pretty obscure facts about Canada as I’ve already posted all the good ones!

It seems 2010 is racing away even before I’ve had a chance to acknowledge that it exists.  I can’t believe the first week of January has been and gone.  It’s already proving to be a wonderful year in Casa Gnome, which makes a wonderful change from the year that was 2009.

To motivate and celebrate the beginning of the year I thought I would take the intiative and give you a guided tour of the area where I make my own brand of magic happen.  I also wanted to enter the current $100 sewing pack giveaway being run by The Oz Material Girls.

At the moment I don’t have a dedicated craft room (but I’m working on changing that) so I multitask in our dining room.

Our 1930′s dining table is just the right size to manage a sewing machine, sewing accessories, pattern and material.

What craft supplies and materials I can store in the ikea shelves and drawers I do.  These shelves are home to all my beads, stationery and miscellaneous tools and office supplies.  The hold a lot more “stuff”than I thought they would and have been a blessing.  I tend to horde glass jars to use as storage containers.  The other great storage solution is using fishing tackle boxes.  They have all these great compartments and come in a range of sizes.

Another handy storage tip.  Because I use a central room to do crafty things I use storage boxes to store all my fabric, sewing accessories and bulky items.  When I’m down with my projects I can pack everything back into the boxes and store them in our garage.  Safe in the knowledge that they protected from damp, dust and beagle.

It’s become a family joke, but I love and adore clipseal bags.  They’re so handy; for everything!  I don’t have a sewing box as such so I store all my sewing implements in clipseal bags and then store them in an ikea storage box.  It makes everything easy to find and organised.  It also stops messy threads from getting tangled and knotted.

The other great thing about using the dining room for my crafty activities; it’s proximity to all the good things in the house.

It’s central to the kitchen.  Which is handy as I’m always wanting something cold to eat or drink in this summer weather.  It’s also close to our “office space”, which means I can check twitter and look for helpful hints and tips on the web.  (Thanks to my lovely model M for showing how handy being able to plug the iron in at the same place your sewing is!)

It’s also handy to the lounge room, which is the one place in the house I’m almost always guaranteed to find HUBBY.  There’s also a downstairs bathroom that’s handy to the dining room.  Once we have air-conditioning installed it’s going to be the most craft perfect place in the world!

Oh and I can’t forget, it’s right next to Sir Reg’s home.  Which means that I get to be serenaded while I’m working.  What else could a girl ask for?

While I’ve been at home going stir crazy I’ve taken the opportunity to do some things that I normally wouldn’t make time for.  One of these things is sewing.  I’ve always had an on a again off again relationship with sewing, but this is the first time I’ve really found a passion for it.  I’m loving it.  You start with all these raw materials and at the end of it you walk away with something completely new.  It’s brilliant.

I had a bunny pattern from Kristen Doran Design, which you can buy here at Kelani Fabric Obsession.  So I thought I would give it a go and see what I could come up with.  The instructions are really easy to follow and have accompanying diagrams which is brilliant for a novice like me.

Over the course of a few hours I managed to complete Lopsy.  (I called her this cause everything on here is a little bit off center, or lopsided.)  I improvised a bit and added a little nose, a bow on her ear and a tail.  I’m so proud of how she turned out.  I was just finishing her off when HUBBY came home from work.  He was really impressed with her and we were joking around and I asked him if he wanted me to make him one.  He laughed and replied, “Yeah! A ninja bunny!” Boys!

Lucky for him I had a stack of black cotton and some black felt.  A couple of hours later and Ninja was born.  HUBBY wanted him to have a mean look about him, so we added a angry set mouth.  (Originally I was just going to have the eyes and everything else in black, like he was covered in a ninja suit.)  Let me just say this for those of you contemplating a ninja bunny of your own – black on black is a hard thing to be hand stitching at 9pm.  I ended up opting to do all the machine sewing with a pale thread just so I could see if anything went wrong.

We’ve had hours of amusement with Ninja.  The game is to put him in unlikely spots for the other person to stumble upon.  (Hence why he’s covered in fluff and dog hair – he’s getting around!)  It’s my turn to hide him so I’m trying to come up with somewhere, I’m thinking in HUBBY’s six pack carton.

It just doesn’t seem fair that I’m the only one having all the fun… so I’m giving away a copy of a bunny pattern from Kristen Doran Design!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post (make sure you put a valid email address in the required field so I can contact you if you win).  The winner will be drawn at random.  Competition is open worldwide.  Competition closes on Tuesday 24 November 2009 at 8pm AEST.  So put your thinking caps on!!!

I was really cautious about adding advertising to my blog.  Too many times I’d been to other blogs and been bombarded with advertising that was horrible and had nothing to do with the content on the blog.  So imagine my delight when Super Kawaii Mama put a call out on Twitter for Aussie bloggers interested in a new blogging experience.   Thus began my journey with NuffNang.  I’m not the only one, NuffNang have over 100,000 blogs on their books.  That’s one heck of a blogging community all bubbling with information, ideas, support and humorous horror stories to share.  It’s fabulous.

To add to the brilliance NuffNang have announced the Asia-Pacific blog awards, which are sponsored by Pringles.  Bloggers from the Asia-Pacific region are set to be honored and recognized for their contribution to the blogging community.  It’s awesome!

But the fun doesn’t stop there.  NuffNang are also giving one lucky person who manages to nomination the highest number of individual bloggers with a cash prize and a trip to Singapore!  Rock on!  All you have to do is click on this link and nominate gnomeangel in the “Best Entertainment Blog” and “Best Hidden Gem” categories. What are you waiting for? Nominations close 13 September 2009, so get nominating!!!

♥ You might also want to check out some of the blogs listed in my sidebar and nominate them too! Remember it’s the person who nominates the highest number of individual bloggers that wins.

Unfortunately, it appears that DUJOUR magazine’s Twitter account has been suspended and I’m concerned that I might not be able to award the prize offered here.  So I’ve decided to cancel the competition.  I’m really sorry to those that have already entered.   I agree, cover shot 1 is by far the best! To make it up to everyone I’ll be running another competition soon!

Ever been stuck in a Supermarket queue starring at the glossy magazines and wished you could have chosen the cover shot?  Or do you have a knack for fashion and want to see it expressed in print? Then this is the competition for you!

DUJOUR magazine are celebrating their anniversary which means it’s time for you to show your love for all things marvelous and vote for the image that you think should grace the cover of the INDULGENCE issue.  It’s simple to vote just comment on this post with the number of the cover that you want to win. Votes will be tallied and supplied to DUJOUR for inclusion in the tally.

For one lucky gnomeangel reader they will win a copy of the Indulgence issue.  To win all you have to do is vote on gnomeangel.com -  Simple!

With the help of my lovely assistant – HUBBY – I have drawn the three lucky winners of the February giveaway.  So without further ado they are:

Fist Prize: Dora

• Desperate Duchesses Eloisa James
• The Write Ingredients Lori Foster
• The Single Dad’s New-Year Bride Amy Andrews
• Dr Romano’s Christmas Baby Amy Andrews
• 3 Badges – Betsy Rules, Polka Will Never Die and I’m a Naked Reader

Second Prize: Rashmi

• Tempted All Night Liz Carlyle
• The Desert King’s Pregnant Bride Annie West
• Hired: The Italian’s Convenient Mistress Carol Marinelli
• Badge, pen and lip gloss

Third Prize: Gypsy

• Hired: The Boss’s Bride Ally Blake
• A Doctor, A Nurse: A Little Miracle Carol Marinelli
• Badge (Sinclair Sucks), keyring and pen

I will be in touch with the lucky winners to get their mailing address.  They will be in the mail by Friday.  I’ll give you all an expected time of delivery once Australia Post let me know.  For those outside of Australia, I’ll be sending them cheap mail so you might get them in time for Christmas. *wink*

Thanks to everyone that entered.  Stay tuned for March’s giveaway…

So the past weekend I spent in Melbourne attending the Australian Romance Readers Convention (ARRC09).  It was brilliant.  I flew down to meet HUBBY in Melbourne on Friday 20 February.  The fun started the minute I hit the airport.

As I paid for my cab I realised I’d left my trusty iPhone plugged in charging on my desk. Doh!  So then I had the internal debate about whether to take another cab back to the house and get the phone or try to live without it over the weekend.  I decided to check in first, and then make a run for the phone.  While checking in I had to disrupt the counter bitch from giving the other counter bitch a verbal bashing.  Not a good image for QANTAS.  I finished checking in, tracked down a pay phone and when I realised I couldn’t use the payphone cause I didn’t have any coinage the decision about whether to return home to get my phone was taken out of my hands.  I am no longer a public phone kind of girl.  So on my way to finding another taxi I reported the counter bitch to the Service Desk.

I managed to find a taxi and advised him of my predicament.  It was touch and go for awhile as to whether I’d make my plane in time or not.  A$90 and a made dash through security and I made it on to the plane.  I was so busy concentrating on making the plane that I wasn’t watching anyone on the plane, so imagine my surprise when I look up to see the lovely face of Ms Tracey O’hara.  What an awesome way to fly.  We ended up sitting across the aisle from each other for the flight and talk about things ranging from books, publishing, television and surgery.  Very cool.

When we got to the Melbourne Airport she kept me company while she waited for other conference attendees and I waited for HUBBY to come and get me.  With a few hours to kill before the welcoming ceremony HUBBY and I hit a shopping center for some lunch and window shopping.  At 5:30pm he dropped me at the Jasper (funky hotel, shame the air conditioner didn’t seem to be working all weekend. So much so that we ended up having to change rooms in the middle of the night to a floor that had working air conditioning!) and I went in search of Miss Kimberley (or as she became know “Plus One”).

It was really strange to see her in her home town.  Strange but cool.  We grabbed a Boost Juice before heading back to wait out the beginning of the convention.  While sitting in the lobby we were befriended by a lovely lady, Cheryl.  There was much laughter and talking about romance books.  We also started a game that we affectionately referred to as ‘guess their genre’.  (You try and guess someones favourite sub genre in romance based on their appearance.  I was studiously looking for the librarian with a heart of wild!  I didn’t see her.)  Once the crowd had been instructed to we registered for the conference, grabbed our goodie bags, some free books and then hit the reception.  We ended up spending the time talking and catching up while continuing to play ‘guess their genre’.  We were both surprised that there wasn’t an introduction speech or something by someone to signal the commencement of the convention.  Just drinks and mingling.  Suited us just fine as we were too busy catching up.

At the end of the reception Miss Kimberley headed home and I headed out with Tracey O’hara, Erica Hayes and Elizabeth Rose. All published (or to be) authors, all amazing women.  We went in search of some cake and drinks and found ourselves in a small cafe in Melbourne Central.  After many calories and many more giggles we parted company and I head out on the streets to find HUBBY.  Got home and to bed by 1:30am.  Shame the next session started at 8:30am!!

Needless to say I didn’t make it in to the first session and missed hearing Mary Janice Davidson address the convention.  I was (very) relived to hear that the sessions will be available on disc.  It’s not the same, but it’s better then missing out altogether.  It was a big day.  I attended two panel discussions, got to scope out the goodie room, bought some books, picked up some more free books, talked to some great people and managed to start my own book idea.

Saturday night was the convention dinner.  It was after five wear so I was forced to put on a frock.  The meal was good.  Not stellar, but it was a large crowd and an event on a budget.  There were some minor glitches with the technology which saw an Award’s winner displayed on the big screen before the Award’s had even been announced.  The dinner seemed to be over really quickly.  It was also strange to be at an event of that kind without having a dance floor.  Weird how we all have these preconceived ideas.  It was a good night.  Again the company of Tracey O’hara, Erica Hayes and Miss Kimberley made it special, and hilarious.  HUBBY joined the ladies after the dinner and we all went to Max Brenner’s for a post dinner drink and chat.

Sunday morning I decided to sleep in and so I missed the first two key note speakers.  Which was a real shame, I would have liked to hear Susan Grant and Liz Maverick.  Guess I’ll have to wait for the discs.  I had the opportunity to attend one last session before HUBBY and I hit the road back to Canberra.  I attended the Urban Fantasy panel.  It was a hoot and convinced me to try a Susan Grant, Keri Arthur and Sherrilyn Kenyon book.  So I made a last minute dash to the book stand to grab copies.  Then it was time to hit the road, Jack.

HUBBY and I drove to Canberra on Sunday afternoon.  We came back a day early so we could spend sometime preparing and doing chores.  It’s all gone by in a blur.  I had a really great weekend.  It was great catching up with some wonderful woman, and it’s inspired me to get out of my comfort zone some more and embrace the things that make me happy.

Don’t forget to enter my competition to win your own slice of ARRC09 @ gnomeangel’s booklist.  Here’s what you could win…