Our Florida Holiday & A Crafty Giveaway – Edited To Add Winner

Hello. Today I want to tell you about the vacation we took to Florida during August, and I also have a crafty giveaway of some items I purchased in Target, Michaels, & Jo-Ann’s while I was there!

We are so lucky that my lovely in-laws asked us to go to Florida with them. They have visited the Summer Bay Resort many times and this year they asked us along to enjoy Orlando and the theme parks!

It wasn’t mine or hubby’s first times out there, as we’d both been before. But it was the kid’s first time. They had been to Disney Land in Paris, but Cheeky Boy was only 1 at the time so he doesn’t remember Paris at all. Little Miss had a couple of memories, like being scared on Big Thunder Mountain, but she was only 4 so again she couldn’t remember much.

They were both super excited about the holiday, and it certainly matched their expectations, and more! We had a wonderful time. And though it was baking hot – I mean really super hot for us English fragile beings (100 degrees F / 37.7 degrees C on some days) – we manage to stay cool a lot of the time by picking the right times to watch shows or sit in queues. Plus it rained on a few days, which cleared the air but didn’t last so long that it spoiled the day.

Here we all are on our way into the Animal Kingdom:

The kids loved the Safari ride here, which we went on twice and saw different animals both times. I enjoyed the Expedition Everest ride which was new for me, and hubby just about stomached it (he doesn’t like roller coasters that much).

One of the best things about Disneyworld is the little extras that kids can do for free – at Animal Kingdom it’s collecting stickers to become ‘Wilderness Explorers’ (you do a variety of things like play music, find out animal facts, and learn about other cultures), at Epcot it’s collecting stamps from each country on a Barney Bear picture (which you can also colour in on your way around), and at the Magic Kingdom there’s both the ‘Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom Challenge’ (using picture cards to cast spells at magic portals throughout the park), and the ‘Pirates Adventure – Treasure of The Seven Seas’ (using a treasure map to find marked spots in Adventure land, where things come to life and the clues lead you to treasure at the end – you keep the map and the treasure card). These were all fun and we could have done lots more if we’d had longer – there were more Sorcery Cards and more Treasure Maps which we didn’t have time for. These extras are not advertised very much so make sure to look out for them if you go there.

My favourite place to go was Harry Potter World at Universal Studios. I have been dying to go here since it opened. My friend Rosie and I actually planned out our own Harry Potter World on a long bus journey once when we were at Uni together, then when the park opened years later we wondered if some Universal Studios bigwig must have been sitting behind us on the bus?!

I’d made shirts for us four to wear to Harry Potter World using my Cricut Explore and iron-on-vinyl. They say:

Mine – ‘I’m still waiting for my Hogwarts letter’

Hubby’s – ‘If you can read this my invisibility cloak isn’t working’

Little Miss’s – It’s leviOsa, not leviosA’

Cheeky Boy’s – ‘You must be a boggart because you look Riddikulus’

These were so fun to wear, all the cast members kept reading our shirts and laughing! The kids loved showing them off. I wished I’d made Disney ones too!

Harry Potter World lived up to my expectations, I loved the Hogwarts Express, the Escape from Gringotts, and the interactive wands especially. The ride in Hogwarts itself made me feel a bit sick though! I will do a post on Harry Potter World another day as I could say so much about it!

All in all, we had an amazing time. The kids will have so many fabulous memories…

And if they ever forget they can watch the movies I made. Thanks to Blogtacular and Xanthe Berkeley’s Video Workshop, I had learned the tricks to be able to record and edit daily videos using my iPhone and the Adobe Clip app. I saved videos that were 1 minute long, which I shared on Instagram and Facebook, and some that were longer (approx 5-8 minutes per day) which I am keeping for family memories. If you missed me sharing them on social media, you can watch the 1 minute long videos stitched together as one video (less than 15 minutes long) here:

Or click HERE to view in YouTube.I also enjoyed visits to Target, Michael’s, and Jo-Ann’s for buying some crafty supplies. I bought lots of bits and pieces, including a Marquee Love letter J, a D-Ring 12×12 album, some paper, material, paints, and more! I was in heaven.I wanted to spread the joy, so I bought some items for a giveaway for you!Here’s the items you could win:

Including some pencils, washi tape, twine, enamel dots, a ‘be creative’ wood plaque, and a cute little notebook – here’s a peek at the pages inside:

Aren’t they fun?!

To enter to win this giveaway just leave a comment at least 8 words long on this post. For additional entries you can also comment on either of last week’s posts – ‘Minc Reactive Paint & Toner Pen’ or ‘Kickstarter Campaign For Jennifer Grace Creates’. So you can earn up to 3 entries.

               

This giveaway is open internationally and it will close for entries on Thursday the 20th of October at 10pm GMT. The winner will be drawn from all entries using random.org, and I’ll post the winner on a blog post at some point that weekend (21st – 24th Oct).

The Giveaway is now closed – the winner was KT Fit Kitty! Thank you to all who entered!

If you have any questions or are having problems commenting please contact me at jennifergrace(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk

Thanks for stopping by!

Jennifer x

Kickstarter Campaign For Jennifer Grace Creates Mugs!

If you’ve recently seen my Facebook or Instagram feed you’ve probably already seen this, but if not here you go! I am currently running a Kickstarter campaign, to try and raise funds to buy a mug press and sublimation printer, so I can produce mugs with my designs to sell in my Jennifer Grace Creates Etsy Shop…

I ordered a few mugs with my designs on a while back, but when they arrived a lot of them had problems – chips in the mugs or errors in the printing. This got me thinking that if I wanted to make more mugs I’d like to be able to do it myself, as I’m a perfectionist and would like to have complete control over the item from start to finish! I could try other companies that produce mugs, but most of the time you have to order lots of one design, and I want to produce lots of designs. I also want to be able to make personalised mugs, so if someone wants their name on a mug, for example, I’ll be able to make it straight away!

Here’s the mug I’d most like to be able to make for myself:

I love coming up with quirky designs, and having my own mug press would make it easy to produce mugs that work for all kinds of people (or mermaids):

I’d like to make some funny ones too…

I designed this one recently because I live by the ‘Jurassic Coast’ in England, so dinosaurs are a regular topic around here:

There’s lots more designs which you can see over on my Kickstarter Campaign. If you could take a look and consider pledging I’d be most grateful! If you aren’t aware of Kickstarter then I should say that most pledges are like you are pre-ordering an item. You pledge for which item you’d like, e.g. one mug, then if the campaign is successfully funded I will send out a survey afterwards asking which design or designs you wanted. Then I’ll buy the mug press and printer, along with lots of blank mugs, and if all goes well you’ll receive your chosen pledge sometime in December 2016. So it’s not like you are donating money for nothing (unless you choose to pledge only £1). Free UK shipping is included in the pledge amounts too.

If you have any questions about it do let me know! If you are unable to pledge at the moment but do like the look of my mugs I’d love to hear in the comments below which of the mugs you like or what designs you’d like to see in the future. I will definitely do a mug giveaway at Christmas too, as long as I’ve been able to buy the tools and supplies.

I will be back tomorrow with a giveaway of items I bought in Florida!

Jennifer x

Blogging Goals For 2016

I’m calling this post blogging goals for 2016 even though the goals aren’t just for blogging, and even though we’re already 2 and a half months into 2016. You’re okay with that right?!

I did a post last year for my blogging goals in 2015, and though I didn’t achieve everything on the list, it certainly helped to get me focused. And I like putting my plans out there for you all to see, so you know what I’m up to behind the scenes, and what I have planned for the months ahead!

So, here’s the things I’d like to achieve in 2016…

Goal One: Make My Blog More Snazzy

Okay, I’m totally cheating with this one, as I’ve already pretty much completed this. But it was a blogging goal for 2016, I just happened to finish it before I wrote this post. I’ve been working super hard on it all weekend. If you are reading this post in an email or reader where you can’t see the whole blog, please pop by and take a look!

Here’s what the landing page looks like now:

 

There were so many things I wanted to achieve, and I think I’ve managed most of them! I wanted: a logo I’d made entirely myself (drawing the text by hand rather than using a font), a home page with some welcome images / info on (rather than you just landing on the blog), a drop-down menu so that you can easily choose which project types or seasons you are interested in viewing, the menu to stay at the top of the page when you scroll down so it’s always accessible, a full width instagram widget in the footer, a sticky sidebar so when you are scrolling down a long post the sidebar doesn’t suddenly go empty, and just a slightly cleaner look – but without losing too much colour.

What do you think? Here’s a screenshot of the old home page for comparison:

 

If anyone is interested I used the Cabin Theme by Select Themes on Envato to help me build my new look.

Obviously I will keep playing around with things a bit but I’m pretty happy with the overall effect. Do let me know if you have any problems with navigation or page load times or anything though!

Goal Two: Work On My Etsy Shops

Yes, you did read that right – it’s plural. I now have 2 Etsy Shops. Because, you know, life wasn’t busy enough!

You already know about my Happy Scatter Etsy Shop, selling stencils and embellishments that I’ve designed and mostly made myself. I’ve been planning some more bits and pieces to add to that, including 8 mini-stencils that are 3″ square, but I’m just waiting for some more mylar to arrive before I can cut them and list them.

But what you probably don’t know about Happy Scatter is that I’ve recently created a Happy Scatter Instagram Account, and a Happy Scatter Blog!

The blog can be found at happyscatter.com and it looks a little like this at the moment:

There’s a few posts on there which I wrote just to get it started, including a tutorial for this card using the Wood Slice Stencil:

At the moment I’ll just be posting my own projects using Happy Scatter items on there, but in the coming months I hope to get a design team going and start a monthly blog challenge, etc, so make sure you add it to your blog reader!

I created that blog using blogger and the Felicity Template by BlogShopbyGeorgiaLou on Etsy, in case you are wondering!

The Etsy shop which I haven’t mentioned on here yet is the one I just opened a couple of weeks ago. For a while I’ve been wanting to have another shop so that I could sell jewellery and gifts that I’ve made myself. I ordered tests for the wooden necklaces and pendants back in May last year, but then I started my part time librarian job in June, and then became the chair of the PTA at my kids school in September, and my plans got forgotten for a while. Then Etsy had a course called Etsy Resolution at the beginning of the year and it got me fired up again!

Here’s what the Jennifer Grace Creates Etsy Shop looks like:

At the moment it just has a few designs of necklaces, earrings, and badges in it, but I plan to add more designs of these and also some other gifty bits.

One of the fun things about them is that you can choose the colours of the jewellery from a selection of paints, and I can add any names or phrases to the items, like on this Bunny Rabbit Necklace, perfect for Easter:

I won’t be blogging about that shop too often on here, but I will occasionally share if I’ve added a lot of new things or something. I will be sharing pics of items in it on my social media, but it’s not going to take over – my usual crafty projects and family photos will still be the bulk of it!

So my goal with my Etsy shops is just to keep working on them – keep adding new items and finding other ways to promote them. I love making items for them and I just want to do more, more, more!

Goal Three: Keep Networking

 Last year networking was one of my goals and I attended the CHA UK Creative Exchanges event in April, which was amazing fun (I wrote about it HERE). I believe CHA UK are doing Creative Exchanges again, but I’m not sure if I’m going this time as I think it’s in June, and in June I am already booked to go to Blogtacular!

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I have wanted to go for the last couple of years, and have been joining in the #blogtacular twitter chats on Wednesday nights at 9pm as much as I can. But I’ve never had the money for the ticket at the right time. So last summer I convinced hubby to buy me an early bird ticket for my birthday present – this means I’ve been excited for months now! It’s less than 100 days to go, and I’ve booked my accommodation for the Friday night so I can attend the Friday night party, so I can officially start jumping around with anticipation!

I also want to continue networking online, in particular I’d love to get better at reading more blogs and writing comments again. I used to be much better at this, at least I would catch up with blogs I loved once in a while, but now when I do read blogs it tends to be on my phone or tablet and I don’t take the time to leave a comment. Which is naughty, because I know how much I love comments!

I enjoyed watching Julie Kirk’s challenge to herself to Write 300 Comments In 30 Days, and the Things She Leaned From It, and whilst I think that’s too high a number for me to attempt, I’m sure I could manage more than I do. I might print off some kind of tally chart to keep by my computer and just see how much I  manage each month. I’ll see how it goes!

Goal Four: Keep Making Stuff

I thought this was an important one to include! Last year I wanted to try and write 5 posts a week, and right now that’s laughably impossible. But I do want to keep making and sharing projects on here as much as I can. I’m not going to promise a certain number or a particular schedule, and I’m still not sure if I’m going to host any kind of blog event this year. But I will promise to keep making stuff, and to keep posting it on here!

It’s going to continue with a mix of layouts, cards, DIY gifts, kids crafts, and more, because I love making lots of different things. But hopefully now that the top menu can help you filter out particular projects you will still enjoy stopping by to see the latest ones you are interested in, if it’s not all of them!

Thank you so much for continuing to support Jennifer Grace Creates with your visits! Do you have any blogging or crafting goals for this year? Let me know. Maybe we can keep each other on track!

I hope you have a great day,

Jennifer x