The book has a bunch of really cute creatures and scenes you can create with needle felting – everything from a silly science lab, to a sweet shop, to a pirate island… with easy to follow instructions.   It looks like it would be a good introduction to the craft of needle felting, you don’t have to already know how to do it.

Tutorial: Big Purple Alien Blob

Huggable and utterly lovable, this friendly alien blob loves making friends, playing sports, shopping, and taking long walks along the lunar landscape.

Download the Full Tutorial : Alien Blob from Wee Felt Worlds

Or… buy the whole book of projects (use the link below to support Dabbled!)

Enjoy!

There were some awesome ideas in the comments for neat things to do with the cards… Thanks to all who entered! I’ll be emailing the winners.

As a blogger, I get offers all the time to do a giveaways or sample a product.  Most of them I don’t deal with, but this one was one I had to pass along.  I’ve been a fan of moo.com for ages, and when Moo offered to let me giveaway some of their business cards to you guys, I was thrilled.  Because these are some really cool cards.  First off, you can put a different image on every card in the pack!  Because of this, these are great not only for business cards, but also for a ton of other uses.   You could make a custom playing card deck, or a ‘concentration’ type game (here’s an alphabet game), or a cool piece of art.  A few years ago I got my Mom mini cards with different pictures of The Boy on them, so she could hand out photos of the grandchild when she met knew people :).

I, however, decided i really needed some new business cards for my web design business, but I wanted some that were more ‘corporate’ looking, and some that were more clever and fun.  Check out all the options here!

So I designed some that reflect my dandelion branding, and some others that use some of my artwork.  Aren’t they nifty?  I repurposed the art from my Robot World 1.0 series and put the poor bots to shilling for my web design services.

The cards came out wonderfully.  They are thick, glossy, and lovely, much better than the average cards that I have ordered in the past from other companies.  Check out all the options here!

So, what would you do with your cards?  Leave a comment here!  I’ll pick 3 lucky winners to win 100 cards themselves!  A tweet or a blog post linking to this will also show up here in the comments, and will get you another entry.

Disclosure: Moo provided me a credit to order the cards to review, but my opinions are my own!

Check it out!  >>>

And FedEx Office was also nice enough to provide me with a Gift Pack to giveaway to my lovely readers…

I Heart FedEx Office Gift Pack:

Weekly/Monthly Calendar – Insert a special photo into the stylish calendar to remember your loved ones all day long and stay on track with your schedule. Calendar is lightweight and ideal to stick in your purse at 5.5 x 8 inches.

Glitter Flower Add-On Accessories – Spruce up a card or scrapbooking project with these sparkle, glitter add-on accessories.  (12 count)

Note Cards with Stripes Envelopes – Whether you’re writing a Valentine’s Day or a special note, these solid note cards with coordinating stripes envelopes are versatile and classy. (12 count)

Who Loves You Sticky Notes – A precious owl says, Who Loves You. Leave a note or a reminder with these cute stickies. (50 count)

Valued up to $25

To win, just leave a comment here and I’ll  pick a winner!  PS I’d love for you to also either follow Dabbled on twitter (@dotatdabbled) or go Like our Dabbled Facebook Page.

*In accordance with ethical blogging standards, just wanted to make sure I disclose that FedEx Office did cover the printing costs for this print.  But my opinions on it are my own!

I sure did, and a busy one too.  But I’m sure you’ve been wondering who one the Serve giveaway, so here are the results!

By the power of the Random Number Generator, we have  a winner.  Congrats to Amy! I’ll be emailing you to the details.

(PS, in case anyone was confused, even though it says 22 comments, 2 were twitter posts, so there were 20 entries.)

This post is sponsored by Serve from American Express. Sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account!

We all know how it is this time of year… we get so busy with shopping & family & busy schedules. So what I REALLY need this time of year is just a fun night out with the girls (no offense, guys!). So that’s what we did the other night — left the kids and the boys at home, and hit the town! Well, hit the town as much as moms who have to get up early the next day can, at least…

Recipe for a successful girls night:

1. Good friends (and mine are the best!)
2. A good place to go that’s conducive to talking and sharing.  We decided on tapas at Pura Vida (highly recommend, for those of you in Atlanta).  This worked out great since we just orders bunches of good food to share.
3. Fun cocktails – my favorite for the evening was a margarita made with grapefruit soda, which I’m determined to recreate… Stay tuned for that!
4. Money to spend*.  The nice thing about tapas for dinner is that we set a general budget at the beginning, and then just split the bill up 4 ways at the end.  No stress.  Consider it a Christmas present to your mental health!

*This girls night was especially fun since we had some money to spend from Serve, the new service from American Express.  It’s super easy… we all signed up for Serve online first, then it is simple to just email your friends money.  Plus you get $10 just for trying it if you sign up right now… a great start to your girls night out budget!

Want to treat your friends to a girl’s night out?  Just comment here, and one lucky winner will win $100, perfect for just that purpose!

Remember to sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account! Official sweepstakes rules and regulations may be found by clicking here. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

Recently I had the opportunity to review a new robot toy: Mechatars, and you know we do love the robots around here, so how could I resist?   Plus, you guys get a chance to win one, and a coupon code MECHMOM for 10% off at iloverobots.com, valid until November 30, to buy your own if you don’t!

The Review

Basically, a Mechatar is a toy that is part remote control robot, and part video game.  Which is pretty much right up my 6 year old’s alley.  So I had him actually do the review on this… see the video below!  But to summarize:

You have 3 Mechatar toys to choose from: a raptor/dino/dragon looking thing, a wolf, and a bear (which the Boy decided was a Polar bear.) The toys have a simple to use remote so you can drive them around, and engage in battles with other Mechatars, or do ‘missions’ which apparently involve beeping.  We didn’t have another Mech to battle with, so I can’t attest to that portion, but the driving around was a little clunky and difficult to control.  Though The Boy didn’t seem to mind.  So your ‘offline’ mode is basically a fighting toy.

The ‘online’ mode is a computer game where you fight with your Mechatar in the virtual world.  The boy and I agree this was the best part of the game.   The fighting game itself was fun, complex enough to be interesting, but not so complex that a six year old couldn’t handle it.  See a little bit of it in action in the video below.  It’s an online game, played in the web browser.  As far as I could tell, there is no interaction with other actual players, so it’s not really a virtual world, but you can play against your friends’ mechatars by allying with them for training missions.  You’re not actually playing against the friend, but you are pitting your Mech against the friend’s Mech, which is being played by the computer.

There are some other pieces to the online game, like Challenges, but The Boy didn’t find them very interesting.  However he LOVED the battles.

From a technical perspective, the game suffers from an unfortunately common problem for kids’ games, of requiring Administrator access to run.  Like many smart parents, we prefer for our son’s computer account to be restricted in what he can run and install (who knows where he might accidentally click when out on the web!) , and his account does not have Administrator privileges.  This means that the program which allows you to sync and auto-connect to the online game doesn’t work automatically – it has to be run as an administrator by us.  It also meant we had problems on the initial install-make sure install the game as an administrator to avoid failures.  If you were doing a lot of syncing between the offline and online this would be an issue, however since you don’t even have to have a Mechatar to play the online game, and syncing isn’t a real big deal if you’re not doing a bunch of offline battles, it hasn’t been a big problem with the way the The Boy is playing the game.

But all in all, The Boy is really enjoying the toy, and definitely recommends it. He loved the battling, but he did wish there were more mechs to battle, not just the 3 styles.

See the video below to see the toy in action, and to see the video game in action!

Giveaway!

So, wanna win one for yourself?

Here’s the rules:

• Visit www.Mechatars.com
• Review the Mechatar lineup and check out which one you think your kid would like.  (To see the Mechatar line up, click on “play now” then “register” but no information needs to be submitted)
• Leave a comment on this post with which Mechatar you’d most like to win!
• See?  Easy Peasy.

Leave your comment, following the rules above, and I’ll pick a winner this Friday!

Small Print

I was selected to participate in this sponsored post series by Clever Girls Collective.  I was compensated for my time for  this review, but my opinions are always my own. 

The lovely people at Klutz sent me a copy of their fun little craft book, Fabulous Flowers, to check out, and I get to pass along some of that goodness to you!

And in the true spirit of Dabbled, I have made myself a paper flower from the book so I can give you the full scoop.  That’s down below the contest, so read on…

It’s basically a bunch of easy to create paper flowers, with instructions and supplies all included.  Except for scissors, you really don’t need anything else.  The flower shapes are all pre-cut, making it much easier for kids (or adults without much patience, like me!) to get right to the creation process, without spending so much time on prep work.

All in all, it would be a great gift for a someone who’d like to craft, but who is a little intimidated to try things like this on their own.  The techniques are well explained and documented step by step.  It does require some patience, as you have to glue pieces together, but the paper cutouts are a great headstart in putting the flowers together.  It also encourages creativity, as it gives you different ideas for putting them together in different ways–not tying you to following everything step by step if you want to play around.  I could totally see this as a great gift for a tween aged girl.

It also gave me some cool ideas for other projects I could do, not necessarily from the book, using the techniques provided!

The Contest!

So, I have two copies to give away to you, my lovely readers (at least those with US/Canada mailing addresses).  I’d love to use this as an opportunity to learn from you guys, so to enter, just leave a comment with an interesting fact about yourself, or why you like to read Dabbled.  For an extra entry, tweet about this to your friends (I’m @dotatdabbled), share it on facebook, and/or go Like our Facebook Page.  It’s totally honor system–because you guys are honest, I know–, so just let me know in the comments which extra entries you did.

My Attempt:

Bottom line, the directions were easy to follow, and even though I did mine pretty ‘quick and dirty’, it still came out looking pretty nifty!

About the Book

Let your creativity bloom with this book of can’t-go-wrong instructions for life-sized, dimensional, paper blossoms inspired by our favorite flowers: roses, daisies, daffodils, hibiscus, zinnias, cosmos, poppies, and larkspur. Sparkly embellishments, fresh paper colors, whimsical design variations, and a custom shaping tool give these blossoms a twist that’s pure Klutz — and quite possibly, even prettier than the real thing.

As always, Klutz has packaged the book with everything you need to get started: 20 pages of ready-to-punch-out paper petals, sparkly flower centers, wrapped wire stems, glue, and of course, the custom winding tool — enough stuff to make bunches of flowers.

•  Watch a video clip http://bcove.me/oa8haqe4
• ‘Like’ Klutz on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KlutzBooks

Ages 8+   $19.99

So, see the details above and enter to win your own!  Open to US/Canada mailing addresses only.

(Want your own?  Go to the Tiny Prints facebook page and get a free card code for Liking them.)

I ordered 3 cards, for both granddads and dad (aka my hubby).  The quality was excellent, and I loved the ease of adding your own photos, not only to the outside of the card, but to the inside of the card as well.  For the 2 granddad cards, I did 2 photos on the front, then a big photo on the inside, opposite the text (see above).  Of course, since it’s all about the Grandson with them, all the pictures are basically of him, hehe.  One word of advice — have a selection of photos already picked out prior to starting the card creation process.  Then it’s easy to just drag and drop them in.

For the Dad card, I did 3 photos with captions on the inside, which I thought was a neat touch.  And much of the text–including the fonts– is customizable.

You can’t really see the envelopes, but they are nice as well, with an embossed To: From: and the addresses printed for you, if you like.

For me, the ultimate procrastinator, the best part is they will not only print the addresses on the envelops, they’ll and even stamp them for you (I never have stamps!) and actually even MAIL them for you if time is tight, for only the cost of the stamp.  Awesomeness.

So, get on over to their facebook and get your free card!.

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I’m very selective on products that I will promote on Dabbled, because I respect you guys–the readers–intelligence, and I want to be sure that anything I talk about will be both relevant, and something I’d recommend personally.  Tiny Prints did spring for the party, and provided these cards for free, but any comments and impressions are mine, and if I didn’t like them, I’d tell you.

Dabbled hosted a party to promote Tiny Prints Mother’s Day card collection the other night, and it was a ton of fun. The idea was to get a bunch of bloggers and friends of Dabbled together, to celebrate Mother’s Day with a little mom pampering, and to show off the Mother’s Day card collection–which is way cute.

Since I couldn’t invite all my lovely readers, I do have a little gift for you from Tiny Prints – Go to their facebook page to get a Free Mother’s Day card for yourself!

Now, on to the party!

We had a really great group of ladies (and a token gentleman or two!), including Linda from Another Good Thing, Niki from Life in Recipes, Grieg and Karen from Foodwhirl, Melissa from Oohshiny, Dabbled contributors Heidi and Katie, and a bunch more…

There was food, drink, and pampering!  Warning, bunches of photos ahead!

A lovely selection of wine makes for great conversation!

Yeah, it was as good as it looks…

Meeting new people!

And much much pampering…

Of course a man enjoys a good mani!

Massage Anyone?

And of course, the cute cards that made it all possible!

Everyone was really excited about the card collection.  Several people had used Tiny Prints before for christmas card or baby announcements, but had not thought to order single mothers day cards from there.  They had a ton of styles, which you can personalize and add photos to.  Katie had all ready ordered one, and was raving about how easy they were to put together, and very reasonably priced.  Plus they’ll even mail it for you!   I’ll be ordering one soon, and I’ll let you guys see it when it comes in :)  Plus remember to get a Free Mother’s Day card for yourself!

All in all, a lovely time was had by all…  And if you’re a blogger in the Atlanta area, drop me a line and introduce yourself, and maybe you can join us if we do something like this in the future!

Cheers,

Dot

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I’m very selective on products that I will promote on Dabbled, because I respect you guys–the readers–intelligence, and I want to be sure that anything I talk about will be both relevant, and something I’d recommend personally.  Tiny Prints did spring for the party, but any comments and impressions are mine.