 Hi Friends! Today I am so excited to share with you the awesome swag bag + contributors we had for FriendsGIVING! To me, this day was suposed to be all about GIVING- so I wanted to be able to give my guest the best swag bag I could! AND like I said before, I can not believe how amazing these bags were! I am so happy that I can finally share with you what was in them! [PSST! : Stay tuned for swag bag giveaways that Kayla and I will be offering on our Instagrams later this week!]  The actual 'Don't Dull My Sparkle' bag I screen printed myself. I ordered the blank pink bags online and then figured out a super easy way to screen print it on my own. I will be sharing the D.I.Y. for that with you later on. It is a screen printing method that I would use with my students, so it should be easy enough for even a novice to do!    Picture via @UnbelievablyHuman The Friendsgiving invitations, coffee mug, 'But First, Glitter!' note pad, 'MFC Friendsgiving' Rustic Feathers notebook, and the 'My Friend Court est. 2013' pillow were all customized/ordered through Tiny Prints®. I could not be happier with the way they all turned out! The pillow + mug are something that I will always treasure as a keepsake mommento to my first big blogger event! : )  Once I knew that I was going to be including the notebook + note pad in the swag bags, I felt like I needed to include some pens too. I started thinking about my favorite types a pens to use, and knew that if I could choose any type of pen, it would be a Gelly Roll® gel pen. They were a childhood favorite of mine. I remember beggging my mom to buy me just one at a time, when I was little- as she had a hard time justifiying spending that much money on a pack of pens for a 8 year old! But even now, in my adult life- they are my go to favorites! Since I am a 'go big, or go home' kinda gal, I decided to e-mail Sakura Of America®, let them know what we were up to with Friendsgiving- and see if they were interested in contributing to the swag bags. No harm, no foul if not- it never hurts to asks for the things you want though! Luckily, they were more than happy to contribute AND even offered to send 12 color sets of their Cray-Pas® Junior Artist oil pastels for us to include in the boxes that we were packing up for the kids! Unbelievable right!? Sakura® sent us a sampling of different types of pens and even packeaged them up in these adorable little pencil pouches too. Heres what they included in each pack for us : · 1 Soufflé® dimensional, opaque ink pen · 1 Glaze® glossy dimensional ink pen · 1 Pigma Micron® 05 pen in black · 1 Gelly Roll Moonlight® 06 (fine point pen). These come in bright, neon colors · 1 Gelly Roll® white pen (great for use on dark, matte paper) · 1 Pentouch® valve type paint marker · 1 Sakura® pencil pouch + product brochures  picture via @emileerose  A couple months ago, at the Maiedae Mixer, I met the lovely Liz from the Pretty Sweet Life blog + shop. When I checked out her shop and saw this 'So Fetch' print- I knew it would be perfect for our swag bag. As it goes along with my #OnWednesdayWeWearArt inspiration from Mean Girls [ "On Wednesdays we wear pink!" ]. I told Liz what we were up to, and she was more than happy send one for us to include in each bag! So great :)  At the Maiedae Mixer I also met Chelcey, who is an amazing photographer, has the cutest print shop and is a blogger as well! When I came across her 'Follow Your Heart' arrow print I knew it would fit right in with our 'Neon Pilgrims + Indians' theme with all the colors + arrows. And 'Follow Your Heart'......that is something that I have been doing a lot of lately, and highly recommend to everyone to do! Chelcey was sweet enough to package up one for everyone and send them all the way from Kentucky!  My friend Christen Strang, who I met through my internship with Hilary Rushford this past summer [she was also an intern at the time] was so kind to send everyone a 'Merry Everything' holiday card + temporary metallic tattoos from her shop! This gal is aaaamazing! She works full time by day and freelances nights + weekends running a print shop + taking commissioned clients AND was recently nominated for Martha Stewart's American Made finalist! Additionally, Kayla & I's friend from high school, Brad- works a company called Lions Thread out of Uganda. 'Lion’s Thread seeks to empower female artisans in the Iganga and Nabikabala regions of Eastern Uganda by providing an avenue through which they can showcase their incredible talents to the rest of the world. Lion’s Thread isn’t about aid. It’s about access. These skillful women deserve the chance to have their talents both premiered and sought after.' You can read all about their story here. But just know that Lion's Thread prides itself on two features: '1. Employing only the finest Ugandan craftswomen and raw materials to manufacture bow ties. 2. Making you look incredibly dashing!' The folks over at Lion's Thread loved our idea of FriendsGIVING. That we were collecting blankets + toys, to send boxes full of joy all over the world this holiday season, AND they wanted to partake. They sent us a bow tie to include in each swag bag! Every gal knows a guy who they could hook up with such a sweet bow tie this holiday season- be it a boyfriend, husband, brother, father, uncle, friend or co-worker. AND what a wonderful way to spread the news about such an awesome company. We were so grateful for these ties + they were a huge hit!
 Kayla was telling her close family friend [who happens to be an author]- Ms. Judi, about FriendsGIVING and what all we were doing. She had two questions for Kayla, 1. Could she come and 2. Could she contribute to the swag bag by offering everyone a download to her book Front Porch Lemonade?! Which just so happens to be about a group of girlfriends! How sweet?! Check it out on Amazon here! This brings us to who provided beverages + food for the event! My college friend Melanie [who I also told you about here] provided us with two jugs of here Oak-Aged Kombucha Tea. We had the Vanilla Chai Tea + the Apple Ginger Spice Tea. The Apple Ginger Spice was my favorite. This was my first time ever trying Kombucha tea, but some of the guest were ranting that it was the best + most refreshing they have ever tried. Follow Golda on Facebook + see where Melanie will be at next!    Lastly, our friends over at GreenBox Worldwide [ran by our wonderful Kayla] were so kind to sponor the event by paying for our food & beverages! Let me tell you a little bit more about GreenBox. GreenBox Worldwide knows growing and maintaining an online presence for a small business. Do you have the idea, but don’t know how to put it into words your followers/readers can relate with? Want to have a greater impact on social media? Need website renovations or a new site from scratch? ....Give yourself a break and let GreenBox tackle these. Some of the services that GreenBox offers are:
GreenBox Worldwide loves to connect with bloggers and build digital communities. They LOVE bloggers and their sweet creative spirits, and thats why GreenBox jumped at the opportunity to support the MFC FriendsGiving by providing food! Go follow GreenBox Worldwide on Twitter: @GreenBoxww Also, follow GreenBox Worldwide on Facebook!  Lastly, that brings me to how many boxes we were able to pack + how many blankets we collected. Total we were able to collect 25 blankets and pack 22 boxes. I am soo happy/proud of us gals! We had such a great time crafting + socializing all the while giving back + spreading love + joy this holiday season- I LOVE it!  This day truly wouldn't have been as specail if it wren't for all theses wonderful brands coming together to make the day/swag bag as great as it was! So from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU- because I couldn't have done it without you!  Photography by : Chris Burden  |
#iliketoARTYhard
 
Paint with me :
About me
Let's be Friends!
Currently on the Gram :Archives
April 2020
|
RSS Feed
