There is something about seeing what other people are creating that inspires me, even if I don’t do their particular craft. In that vein I wanted to share with you some of the really neat stuff I’ve seen lately.

But first, I wanted to share a couple of contests that a couple of friends are having.

My friend Susan at By Grace who is a missionary pastor’s wife in Canada, is hosting a contest for her daughter who does nice work making jewelry. She has an Etsy shop called edcdbeadz, and if I recall correctly, I think she is trying to earn money toward college (though even a teen earning her own spending money is a help to a parent. 🙂 ) Anyway, she is giving away this handcrafted necklace:

See this post or click on the photo to enter.

Then Jeanne Winters of Inspiring Ideas, who designs the “Simply Inspiring” line for Hallmark, is hosting a Mother’s Day giveaway of this from her line here.

Amy at inspire co. is hosting a stitch-along that I am really tempted to do. The idea arose after several crafters did a 39 squares stitch-along: they created a grid of 39 one-inch squares and stitched one square a day, showing us their progress along the way. Besides Amy‘s, I also followed Dawn‘s progress. Amy enjoyed it so much, she wanted to do another stitch-along. this time with the theme of counting our blessings. She created a separate blog for it called, not coincidentally :), Counting My Blessings with a list of participants on the sidebar. Already through that I’ve found another crafty blogger whose style I love at Dishy Vintage. It’s been a long time since I did any embroider besides cross stitch, but I love the depth and dimension of embroidery. I’ve never designed my own, though. And between now and the ladies’ luncheon is the busiest time of year for me, next to Christmas. But I am still tempted…it would be so much fun. Or I might just enjoy watching a few others and then maybe doing my own this summer.

Skip To My Lou has some great teacher appreciation ideas along with links to past posts along the same lines. Great for unique end-of-the year teacher’s gifts. She also shows how to make sachets out of vintage hankies that you don’t want to cut up and easy and inexpensive floral centerpieces that I think even I could do.

Tipnut has a link to this cute salvaged patchwork bulletin board.

Crazy Mom Quilts shares how she organizes scraps of fabric and a quilt made from scraps about 1″ wide.

And though I don’t quilt, I enjoyed Sew, Mama, Sew’s article on Maintaining Your Quilting Momentum. It has some great tips for storing fabric — which I do have a lot of — and need to do something with. I just clicked on the site of the author of that particular post, Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio, and saw she is having a Spring to Finish Challenge to motivate to finish a project of some kind this spring.

And though I don’t crochet, I know some of you do, and Vanilla Joy has had several crocheting videos and tutorials lately.

So many neat things to do, so little time…….:-) But I still enjoy them vicariously. 🙂