Vacation Fun and a CONTEST!

I'm a fan of--

*Cheap. Yeah, I like saving money.

*Green. The best "green" strategy of all? Use what you have first.

* Color. Now that I live part-time in Florida, my wardrobe is much brighter.

* Recycling. Before you toss it, what can you do with it?

* Cute. I need a dose of it daily.

This page satisfies all my "fan" yearnings.

CHEAP The flowers came from a set of cheap drink charms I bought at the dollar store.

GREEN  Most of the paper on this page is old. The dots are from K & Co., and I plan to use up the rest of the page in small pieces because this adorable pattern is a bit overwhelming otherwise.

COLOR  There's a lot of it here! You could make a similar background paper to the K & Co. dotted pattern by using a circle punch on a bunch of your paper scraps, couldn't you? Hmmm.

RECYCLING The round circle is paper glued to and tucked around the cardboard circular top of a spool of ribbon. I just peeled the top off the spool, and voila!

CUTE My sister Meg drew this flamingo. He'd be the perfect accent for any vacation page. You can upload the file and print it out by going to my YouPublish library.

While you're there, be sure to check out the excerpt from Make, Take, Murder, the latest Kiki Lowenstein Mystery. It's available now through Amazon
CONTEST

The fabulous "VACATION" and the cute sunglasses on this page came from a K & Company Adhesive Chipboard pack.

You can win your own pack. Here's how:

1. Invite a friend to become a follower of this blog. Or become a follower yourself.

2. Leave me a comment telling me your friend's name or yours.

3. Do this before May 12 at midnight.

The first FIVE commenters to do so will win a package with 12 cool embellishments.

DEADLINE: May 12 at midnight.

Announcing Book #3 in the Series--

It's now available for pre-order from Amazon. Go to http://tinyurl.com/ylors6d

Photo, Snap, Shot will be released in May in time for National Scrapbooking Month. Stay tuned for more details, as I am busy planning a "Kiki Lowenstein World Tour."

Contest on Spotted Canary

Contest on Spotted Canary

It's up! You'll want to learn all about the new Spotted Canary Contest. You could win naming rights for a character in Book #3 of the Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery Series.

Go to...http://tinyurl.com/lyru9n

And while you're there, check out what a super site this is for crafters. You'll find everything you need to put FUN back into your hobby world. Here's the site: http://www.spottedcanary.com

Why visit a craft site?

This isn't just any craft site. Most of them have a LOT of promotional information for their products and very little information with projects. However, Spotted Canary is a unique design, reflecting a different philosophy. It's goal is to be a world of information, of like-hearts gathering, for crafters. Yes, there are ways to find products, but that's not the PRIMARY goals.

In the months ahead, we'll be doing more and more activities with Spotted Canary, such as posting on their blog and adding articles. Additionally, they've agreed to help us in supplying prizes, and supplies for the many public appearances we make to promote Kiki Lowenstein.

So get involved now and watch us both grow!

You Inspire Me!

Yes, it's true. The notes, the comments, the responses I get keep me going. I imagine that some of you think this is a one-way street: I write and that's it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YOU and YOU and YOU are why I write. I wake up in the morning thinking about you and how to reach you, how to get my books into your hands, how to offer you more than just a bunch of pages with a story typed on them.

Here are some ideas I'm noodling around:

1. I'm working with a group here in the St. Louis area to have a big inaugural launch of the Kiki Lowenstein Fan Club. It would include a weekend crop with lots of prizes, buttons that say "Get Kiki", and fan club membership cards. Of course, being a crop there has to be food, fun, classes and prizes.

2. I've written one Kiki short story. I'll probably send it off to a magazine first, but now I'm itching to write OTHER Kiki short stories. I have to decide the best way to share these--if my publisher agrees that I can.

3. I'm working on a blog tour. What scrapbooking blogs do you like best? What chat rooms?

4. I'm going to post scenes from Paper, Scissors, Death on my website.

5. I'm working on getting more tutorials onto the website--and making it easier for scrapbookers to find scrapbooking info.

6. I'm working on an online writing class--Writers Online Workshops has given me back the rights to my class "How to Get Started (Quickly) in Scrapbook Journaling" because they've made some changes.

7. I'm working on formatting all my old Graceful Bee columns into an e-book that I'll give away with the purchase of two books--Paper, Scissors, Death and Cut, Crop & Die.

Any other ideas for me? What would you like for me to do? Send me a GREAT idea and I'll come up with a gift for you!

Okay, back to the new book I'm writing! Ta-ta for now!

Joanna