Monday, November 27, 2006

Write Something and Win Some Deb aRt (and other possibly-almost-fabulous prizes)!!!

(Contains minor Quilt Content - GASP!) The past couple of days, I've been working on making a few fabric postcards. The quilters who visit here will know exactly what I mean. Non-quilters may or may not. They're little artsy things you send through the mail just like a regular paper postcard, but they're made of fabric and are layered and stitched just like a teeny-tiny quilt. I've been making one for Deborah B who was nice enough to send me a photo of a poster exhibited at the Quilt Festival in Houston, featuring one of my fabric postcards. Check it out: I don't have to tell you which one is mine, do I? Well, in case I do, it's the shoe card in the lower right. BTW, all the postcards pictured are the same size (4" x 6"), so it looks weird to me to see mine shown larger. But I digress.. I'm also making one for my BFF Morven, who hinted that she'd like to see a DebR postcard show up in her stuff from Santa. And I'm making one that will go to my friend Dragonfly once she completes a challenge I set for her earlier this month when she was having trouble getting going on her NaNoWriMo story. And that brings us to the subject line of this post. While I was making these cards, I decided to make two more and extend the aforementioned challenge to RSR readers and turn it into a little contest. It's been a while since I gave something away here and that's fun to do! Actually I'm turning it into TWO contests. The winners will each receive one of my FlipFlop fabric postcards (similar to the one shown in the poster above, only the shoe will be a different color), plus assorted other Stuff still to be determined because I haven't bought any of it yet. Heh. But I'm going shopping later this week and will put together a couple of little goodie boxes that will contain the postcard, plus other stuff I think is neato-coolio. And even if the winners turn out to not like the same stuff I do...hey, it's Free Stuff and you could always re-gift it. ;-) Contest One For this contest you have to meet the exact same challenge I issued to Dragonfly - write a sex scene. Yes, you read that right - a sex scene, dammit! Ill leave it up to you how explicit to get, but let's not make it anything I'd be embarrassed to share with my more modest friends or family members. I'm not going for porn here, more like romance novel stuff or even light romantic comedy. After all, no one said it had to be a GOOD sex scene. :-) (If someone submits something I think crosses that admittedly ambiguous line, I'll send it back to you and tell you why and give you the option to edit and try again if you like.) But wait - there's more! (C'mon, this IS a challenge, after all.) Each of these sex scenes must somehow include the following four elements: a rubber chicken, a pair of pink fur-lined handcuffs, a bird named Trixie, and a DVD of the Happy Days "Jump the Shark" episode. Entry details to follow after I tell you about the next contest. Contest Two What, you say that the thought of writing a sex scene and posting it on the internet makes you feel very uncomfortable? Yeah, me too. I found out a couple of years ago when I was writing my NaNoWriMo story that, while I like to read a well-written sex scene and I certainly enjoy participating in one (ahem), I do NOT like to write them. My story STILL, two years later, has a big blank space in the manuscript where I think a sex scene should be, and in the middle of that big blank space it just says "add sex scene later." Sigh. So for Contest Two, write a an excuse story for me about why you didn't turn in a sex scene. Think "the dog ate my homework" only more outrageous. The catch? Oh come on, I bet you've guessed. Every excuse story must include the following four elements: a rubber chicken, a pair of pink fur-lined handcuffs, a bird named Trixie, and a DVD of the Happy Days "Jump the Shark" episode. How To Enter Please read carefully! This is not rocket science and I'm kind of anal about people following the directions for this stuff. :-) 1. Let's keep these stories brief - say no more than 250 words or so. (I'm not going to count, so if you go over a little that's fine, but let's use some common sense and not send in the blog equivalent of "Gone with the Wind", y'all!) 2. When you've finished story (or stories), email a copy to me at this address: tansy @ kywirelesscollc.com - delete the spaces on either side of the "@" to make that address functional. Put either "Contest One" for sex scenes or "Contest Two" for excuse stories in the subject line. Within 24 hours after sending your email, you should receive a confirmation email from me that will simply say "got it." If you don't receive that email, contact me using the email addy found in my sidebar. 3. You may only enter each contest once, but you may enter both contests if you like, for a total of two entries. However, you can only win once. If by some bizarre chance the same person would win both, I'll draw a name from the two runners-up and that person will win one of the prizes. (Drawing of names from a hat will also be how I break ties, if any.) If you enter both contests, send each entry in a separate email, using the appropriate subject line for each. 4. Deadline for getting entries to me is one week from today - Monday, Dec. 4th, at 11:59 PM US Eastern Standard Time. (You're each responsible for figuring out how the heck that translates to your local time! I've got enough to do here organizing this thing. Ha!) 5. A couple of days after the contest closes, I will post all entries here without names (I'll assign each story a number) and the winners will be chosen by reader vote. I'll explain the voting thing in more detail when the time comes. 6. Obviously if you win I must be able to contact you, and you must be willing to email me your real name and your snail mail addy, otherwise I can't send you your goodie box, which would kind of defeat the purpose of entering in the first place. 7. Any questions? Contact me at the same addy I listed for entries and give me at least 24 hours to respond. So come on, y'all! Get writing and sending those things in. Don't make me have gone through thinking up this puppy for nothing! ********************* Here's today's DAT - another view of a bloom on my Christmas cactus. I think this version is very O'Keeffe-ish. "Cactus Flower 2" (clickable if you want to see it larger in a new window)