Oh boy. I am officially at SNAP right now.  I bought my ticket way back in November, so it’s been a long wait for this day.  Excited/nervous! If you want to follow along on my adventures, you can find me on instagram: betterafterlnz.  If you don’t want to follow along, I totally understand.  It’s pretty much  the opposite of fun to watch other people having fun when you’re not there.  That’s why New Year’s is the worst holiday ever:  Let’s sit around and watch other people on TV having fun, yay fun!

But anyway.  I DO have something way FUN for you!  How about a Silhouette Portrait giveaway?

The Silhouette is my one can’t-live-without-it crafting item.  I’ve sung it’s praises long and loud, and am excited to be able to offer one lucky winner the chance to win a Silhouette Portrait of their own today.

Here is a little project I did the other day that wouldn’t have been possible without my Silhouette.  First I started with the most insanely ugly painting from a thrift store. It’s huge, like 27″x47″. I forgot to take a picture, because I bought this thing a hundred years ago and it’s been sitting in my garage since then, but it looked pretty much like this, only uglier.

I recovered it with a painters drop-cloth and then left it in my garage for another hundred years.  Then one day inspiration struck and I decided I’d try to paint a map of the world on it.

Can you imagine if I had tried to free-hand this?  One word: Pangea.  Instead, I downloaded the world map shape from the Silhouette store, a
grand total of 99 cents, and pieced together a giant  paper copy, then traced the outline and filled it in with paint. That’s why all the little
islands might not be in exactly the right spots.  I also discovered a new island off the coast of Mexico.  That is definitely not an errant paint dribble.

I wanted to age the canvas to look like an old map, so I brewed up a bowl of tea and poured it on the painting here and there, whenever I happened to walk past it in the garage.  I love it, but it’s not quite finished.  I think it needs something else, but I don’t know just what yet.

But anyway, if you’d like to get you hands on a Silhouette machine, Silhouette is offering one of their best bundle deals of the year with their April promotion that starts today!

  

Major savings!

And if you already have a Silhouette machine, good news for you: they are also having a mega deal on their vinyl.  Regularly $14.99, it’s now $9.99, but if you use the promo code AFTER, you can get 25% of of that.  So, that’s $7.50 a roll!  That’s huge!

I am headed to SNAP this weekend!  Yay and yikes! For those of you who don’t know, SNAP is a conference for creative bloggers that is held yearly in Lehi, Utah.  It’s a pretty big event, and I’m nervous! This is my first blogger conference ever, cue sweaty palms.

I don’t really know what to expect, but I have gleaned a couple of tips from the internets beforehand. Thankfully so, because I was about to make some blog conference faux pas. For instance:

1. Don’t forget roommate gifts!  I didn’t realize this was a thing. But I should have figured, because most bloggers I know are crafty-craftertons who love any excuse to whip up adorable, thoughtful, and color-coordinated party favors. Luckily, I clued-in in enough time to not arrive empty-handed.  I really hope my roommate gifts are up to par, because I am rooming with some serious crafty/creative-wizards:

Yes, I get to room with these gals! Kristi and Kelli from Lolly Jane, Kristen from Capturing Joy with Kristen Duke, and Katie from Sweet Rose Studio.  They are all amazing and so talented.  I can’t wait to see what they bring me hang out with them!

2.  Jazz up your business cards.  This is also a big thing.  Apparently business cards at blog conferences are business cards on steroids. It is not enough to hand out a plain old business card, no.  Now they come with mini-gifts, embellishments, or they morph into puppets and throw candy.  Not quite, but almost.

I figured it was time to up my business card game, which previously was a flimsy little hot pink card with my contact info on it, seen here:

Luckily the kind people at MOO offered to help me
out just in time, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with what
we created:

My picture-taking skills hardly capture the quality of their ink and paper, it’s really quite impressive.  You should hold this in your hand. It is made from such thick,
high-quality paper that I’ve had people try to OPEN it!  

And check out that little band of color around the outer edges of the card, another customizable touch MOO offers.

If you are in the market for fancy schmancy new cards, definitely check out MOO first. They were absolutely awesome to work with; I’ve never experienced better customer service
anywhere in my life, no joke.