Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, Festivus, or what-have-you :)

Saw this via our friend Julia, (Hi Hula!), It's the a capella group "Straight No Chaser" of Indiana University. (I have a weakness for humourous, a capella music).



Anyhow, we'll be on holidays until January 1st, which means any orders that come in at that time won't begin shipping out until January 2nd.

Hope you all have a wonderful and restful holiday. We like to celebrate Christmas with our families, and typically we do something for Festivus by dragging out the ol' aluminum pole and air out some grievances. The feats of strength are difficult, since our living room is rather small. ;)

Plushie! for the pattern impaired

Saw this via BoingBoing:


It's "Plushie: an interactive design system for plush toys". It's a little interactive program that allows someone who couldn't draw a pattern to save their life (me! me!) to create patterns for 3D plush toys. They've got a link for the demo program (see under 'Demonstrations'), but it's for Windows only and not for us lowly mac users. It looks intriguing enough though, that I'm willing to unearth my old, loud PC to give it a shot.

I've made plushies in the past, but they've been more along the lines of fluffified flat shapes, as evidenced by these:


These are my version of Eric's parents, done in miniature, about 5" high, with cardboard versions of their furniture. It was part of their Christmas gift a couple of years ago, and it's been hard to top... I figure the gift of the grand-child will just have to suffice now.

In any case, I'm already thinking I'd like to try more 3D plushies when there's actually time. (Time?)

Oh and FYI: next Tuesday the 18th is our last day for taking orders. Then we're closing shop until New Year's. We'll still be around answering emails though. And if you're stuck for a gift, and don't want to do the panicked, last-minute shipping, we've always got gift certificates.

Easy tree-topper

We have an artificial Christmas tree. I've never actually had a real Christmas tree, but that's probably a good thing, since it turns out I'm allergic to most tree and tree-related products. :/

As artificial trees go, ours is pretty run-of-the-mill and flimsy. So much so that when I picked up a star for the top of the tree from the local Ikea, it turned out that the tree was not robust enough to support the weight of the star. Then I saw this link featured on Rare Bird Finds. It's how-to instructions for making a 3-D paper snowflake, which in my opinion, makes a perfect Christmas tree topper.




I made one using two sheets of white bond paper (stolen from our computer printer in the office), and voila! instant tree-topper. It seriously only took about 15 minutes in all to make. Since it's just paper, it's very lightweight and a fun, easy way to top the tree.

A nice surprise

We got a nice little surprise yesterday. It turns out Blend Creations was featured in the yesterday's Ottawa Citizen. We were mentioned in "The Ottawa 100-mile gift guide", under the heading "For the glitterati".

Basically, the gift guide promotes the idea of "local shopping for global change" -- shopping locally as a small way of reducing your carbon footprint on the planet. Now, I realize that most of our customers are not actually local, and we really, really appreciate each and every customer who has purchased from us, and enjoyed our products. It is nice to get some local recognition though :)

So, if you're from Ottawa and found us through the Citizen, "hi!".
If you're not from Ottawa and reading this, why not try "local shopping for global change" in your area -- support your local artists and independant, small businesses. (That being said, I think we'll have to get a "Rim Roller" the next time we're at Lee Valley...).

You can read part of the 100-mile gift guide here. The "For the glitterati" section is here.

(Note: I'm not sure how long the Citizen actually keeps stories active in their online archive).

The last of the November giveaway winners

Congratulations to Megan Reigner of Azusa, CA.
She's the last of our mi-SPA/Blend Creations mi-COLLAB contest winners, and she's won a four o' clock foliage necklace.


Thanks to everyone who entered!