And last, but certainly not least, Tuesday January 20 gives us Trudee Sauer, from North Carolina.

What led you to crafting?

In 2003, I found out about stamping from a neighbor that invited me to a stamping party. I became a demo and the rest is history!

What inspires you?

I find inspiration from everything, magazines, catalogs, nature, patterned paper, greeting cards at the store, etc. There’s really no shortage of inspiration, as long as you view things with an open mind.

Do you like to make cards or scrapbooks or altered art?

I prefer to make cards, though I am perfectly able to make other projects. I just feel like cards are the most “useful” to me.

Do you work outside home?

I work full time for a major US bank as a Financial Specialist. I have been with them for 13 years.

Do you shop for supplies locally or online?

I tend to do the bulk of my shopping online, as there’s a much better selection.

Thank you, Trudee!  Now run over to Trudee’s blog Follow Your Bliss and see the 16th and final Sneak Peek for Spellbinders’ 5 Year Anniversary Party.  Be sure to enter today’s contest, the prize package is huge!

Keep checking your email as we finish contacting the winners, and check here for their responses.  Hopefully it’ll be YOU!  Thank you for coming to our party, I hope you had a wonderful time!

Hey Eli, want some leftover cake?

Beth

We just keep giving and giving and giving…and we like it. We hope you do too. The die template pile is getting higher and the winners are certainly appreciating it… The die template added today was featured on Beth Pingry’s Blog: Cookies for Breakfast. You all know her from here…she’s our blogger, with me, Eli. Let’s check out that pile right now.

That is quite a treasury! We can’t wait to give it away. This time, we had just under 2,000 entrants and the program over at Random.org gave us this:

Here are your random numbers:

350

Timestamp: 2009-01-18 04:54:43 UTC

So we contacted this contestant and found out she lives the farthest away of any winner so far…

Jessica of Sundbord, Sweden

When we heard from her, this is what she said,

Jessica, we’re excited for you and inspired by the projects as well. Also glad to see so many of our international friends commenting and entering. Superb!

Tonight (January 19th around midnight) will be our last 5th Anniversary Party release. So go and visit Linda Duke today and tomorrow (19th and 20th) to enter and be sure to visit Trudee tomorrow and Wednesday (20th and 21st) to enter. Then for a special message from Stacey Caron, simply come back here to see what she has to say…

Happy crafting, Eli

We can’t believe it’s already time to award the die templates to the winner of Day 10. Time flies when you are having fun. Yes, we are having fun and hope you are too. We are so glad that our visitors continue to enter in numbers over 2,000. So, let’s get to it and see what is being given away today:

Our winner today, comes to us through Random.com’s choice of number:

Here are your random numbers:
914
Timestamp: 2009-01-17 04:19:41 UTC

From that number, we contacted our new friend:

Georgette of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania

Who Said:

Wow. It doesn’t get much better than that (Well, at least only for a few more days.) Thanks again to everyone who is joining us for our Fifth Anniversary Celebration. Good luck over the last few days of contests.

Lets go to sunny California to visit with Linda Duke today.

As a child, Linda always had a pencil and paper in her hands and she doodled whenever possible. Her father was a very talented artist and was her first teacher. “I would sit and watch him make beautiful creations of landscapes, objects around the house, or anything that caught his eye,” she says. “I would then try to duplicate what he created”.  In school, art was her favorite subject and she decided at a young age she wanted to study animation. Fourteen years ago, Linda attended a stamping party and has been stamping ever since. This medium now trumps all her other art interests. She is a several year member of Splitcoaststampers.com and feels that her stamping abilities have improved tremendously through the talented artists that share their work there.  In April 2007, Linda became part of the Splitcoaststampers Design team, a.k.a the Dirty Dozen. For six months, she truly loved being a part of this elite team. Currently, she is a Redevelopment Specialist in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley. She can’t wait to retire and concentrate on full-time paper crafting.

You can still win today’s die template, along with all the previous reveals, by visiting Linda Duke’s blog Linda’s Works of Heart and sending in your entry.

Wow, can you believe we’ve been going strong for 14 days and we are not done yet?  Keep your gloves and hat on, its still cold in the Midwest, and we’re going to Iowa to visit Donya Shroeder.

Donya has loved paper arts since she first realized what paper was. “As a kid I collected stickers (remember scratch and sniff?) and still do. Now I try to actually use them instead of just owning them,” she says. In kindergarten, she wanted to learn how to write in cursive because it looked so cool (She is still fond of the cursive e). In high school, she started a stationery and card company, designing event invitations and gift certificates for her family’s bed and breakfast and the local arts council.  Currently she is purveyor and instructor for her paper and glue habit, a.k.a. co-owner of a paper arts store. She loves getting to play all day in the paper, paint, and glue, demonstrating to customers, and getting them as excited about the new tools as she is. She says, “I have a really broad range of tastes and that shows up in my work, from clean and simple to wouldn’t that look better if I drove my car over it distressed. I’ve had a fantastic time with the Wizard dies. They are some of the coolest and most versatile dies on the market.”

Well Donya, I wouldn’t drive my car over these, they look great just the way they are!

So drive, walk, or bike…or in today’s case hop on a snowmobile and head over to Donya’s blog, Puckish.  And you better bring a trailor, that prize package is getting pretty big!  Be sure to enter the contest when you get there!

We’ve arrived at 7th Heaven. Ahhhhh. The blog reveals continue to be amazing. We are so lucky to have such amazing designers. The new die template for this give-away is S4-192 Blossom that was shared by Jennifer Ellefson on her blog, Created From Paper. Let’s see:

Our contestants remain constant which proves that you all are coming back which we LOVE. The random.org message for today is:

Here are your random numbers:
1984
Timestamp: 2009-01-14 13:24:28 UTC

Which gave us the name of:

Elaine of Victoria, BC Canada

Elaine was so excited. She had this to say about winning,

“Wow, what a wonderful e-mail to get! I am so excited!!! The dies so far have been fabulous and the designers incredible and I am looking so forward to playing with them. Thank you so much for having a wonderful contest and an incredible product.”

Well, congratulations Elaine. We are glad to hear you love your new die template designs and are looking forward to receiving them.

We keep getting lots of entried but there might be one spot for YOU! So keep visiting!!

today’s Sneak Peek is from Sally Lynn MacDonald.  She lives in Connecticut with her husband of 21 years, Neil, her daughter, Brianna and the “Twinkies,” Cameron and Courtney.

Sally Lynn has been an avid scrapbooker, stamper, paper and altered artist since 1998, when her first child was born.  Subsequently, after the birth of twins, she quit her high-tech career at IBM to be home with her growing family. “This is when creativity became a survival skill!” she says. Her style is eclectic and she loves to make each project unique, interactive and indulge her creative side.  She is a certified and/or endorsed instructor for several companies, including Copic Markers, and she travels around the country teaching classes that focus on technique and tools. Her work has been published in Paper Crafts, Rubber Stamper and Stamper’s Sampler Take Ten. Her personal design challenge is to take products or techniques that would have her students saying “Huh?” and bring them to “Aha!” .

Be sure to enter to win today’s prize package, can you believe how many awesome die templates are being given away?  I’ll race you to Sally Lynn MacDonald’s blog, InkyHeart.

Hey all,

Thanks to Beth, the better part of the Spellbinders™ blogging babes, who found all the crazy, loopy html coding that had the last post all wacked out…well, it’s fixed now. Is it Monday? Or is it that all this giving away of dies along with preparing for CHA has got my brain a bit scrambled. Hmmmmm.

(Hey Beth…let me have you check it before I post next time…Eli)

Day Nine is done and we just continue to give more and more dies away. Including today, our 5 Anniversary party has given away 64 die template sets. That’s 5-7 die templates per set. Can you say HUGE?

Thanks to Jeni Calkins for her fab artwork over at her blog! Here are the dies being awarded today.

Our entries continue to be in the range of 2,000. WOW! You all are being so loyal and we really appreciate it.

After checking with Random.org, we received this

Here are your random numbers:

1837

Timestamp: 2009-01-15 20:03:31 UTC

which brought us to offer this amazing pile of die templates to:

Linda from San Antonio, Texas

Quick as a wink she said,

“Oh my gosh!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t believe I won! After I ran around the house for 30 minutes screaming hysterically….I calmed down enough to ask my oldest daughter to read the e-mail with me, to make sure I was reading it correctly(of course still all the while screaming). She gave me that look that only a 25 year old can give her crazy mother, and said yes Mom, you won! THANK YOU so much, I can not begin to tell you how excited I am, and this e-mail has just made what was a really bad week into a wonderful one. I know that these dies will just help me so much in my card making, and I can’t wait to use them.THANKS AGAIN! Linda

We are honored to have been screamed about! Congratulations and have fun with your new Spellbinders™ die templates!!

Thanks to all of you who continue to send us your entries and we wish you all luck for the next blog.

Toss aside those parkas and bask in the beautiful South Carolina sunshine, and grab yourself a tall glass of Pink Lemonade with Keri Lee Sereika.

Do you like to make cards or scrapbooks or altered? - I love to create Altered Items but find that I don’t have as much time as I would like right now…so I get more cards than anything else done these days!

Marital status/Kids/? I am married to a USAF Pilot and have three kids with the fourth expected in June

Aside from paper, what other materials have you used? I work with Clay, Fabric, Wood, Tile…you name it, I have probably used it at some point!

Where do you look for inspiration when you are about to start something new? I tend to just look around me…I love to go outside for fresh air and sunshine then I like to get a good magazine and scan for fresh color palettes and design ideas.

What kind of workspace do you have? I am blessed to have a 16 x 10 studio that is attached to my kids play room. I can keep an eye on them and work at the same time!

Is there anything you would like to add? Can’t think of anything! LOL Other than I write for two magazines - Crafts N Things and Scrap & Stamp Arts Magazine perhaps.

Visit Keri Lee’s blog, Pink Lemonade, for a refreshing new die template!  Yes, there is another drawing for the ever increasing prize package, don’t forget to send in your entry!