Happy Birthday, Christen!

Most of you probably don’t know, but today is the birthday of my very sweet and sassy daughter.  Thirty-two years ago, she came into this world like a boss, and she’s been ruling my world ever since!  Seriously though, my Christen is the craftiest and most artistic person I know, and so I can think of no one better to be the inspiration for today’s post.

Why should you care?  Well, for one thing, we’re giving away a PRIZE and YOU could WIN it!

Yep! That’s right…we’re having a little birthday contest here on the blog.  In honor of Christen’s 32^nd birthday, I am giving away your choice of a grab bag of supplies valued at over $50, or a certificate for $25 off your registration for one of our events!  It is not going to be announced anywhere else, and only blog subscribers are eligible!  All the details can be found here on the blog.  So read the blog every day throughout the contest, and on Saturday, fill out the contest entry form.  On Sunday, I will draw the winner!

WIN! WIN! WIN!
PRIZES! PRIZES! PRIZES!

One of the things I love to do with Christen is cruise.  In fact, she was with me on my very first cruise (along with my best friend and Crafty Neighbor co-founder, Stephanie), and we had so much fun that I just had to get involved in cruising myself. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to go on one of our scrapbooking cruises, now is your chance to see what it’s all about!  Over the next blog posts, I’ll be sharing photos from our cruise, samples of our projects and workshops, and more.

If you’ve ever been to a Crafty Neighbor event, you know that I’m all about perceived value.  That’s why we give away lots of prizes, gifts, and goodie bags at our events.  It’s always been my goal to give participants MORE than what they paid for or expect.  I don’t ever want a cropper to go home saying, “I paid for this event and this is all I got”; I want them to go home saying, “I went to this event and look at all the stuff I got!”  I want them to feel like they got MORE than they paid for -- way more!

On this year’s cruise, we gave away goodie bags valued at over $150 each including products from top names like Lawn Fawn, Maya Road, and Quick Quotes.  Included in this was a full box of Tombow Mono tape runners (6 packages) for each participant!  We also had special treats for our guests each night.  We call them “Pillow Gifts” because on some cruises we have the ability to put them on their beds while the stewards are performing their turn-down service.  Since it was a scrapbooking cruise, I thought it only fitting that the very first pillow gift be a scrapbook kit, so I prepared this very special kit for everyone who met with us in Galveston the night before the cruise – a Cruise Friends autograph page. That way they can take down the names of all the new friends they met!  And yes, I do still have a few of these kits and they are for sale on my Etsy shop if you’d like to purchase one for yourself.

Here's the whole layout once it's assembled.

Here are a few closeups of some of the details:

 

Well that’s it for today!  I have to get ready for 3^rd Wednesday Stamp Club tonight and on Friday, Sixta and I are driving to Spring, Texas to crop with some of our new cruise friends and work on a few projects we haven’t finished.  I can’t wait!