To enter, everyone was asked to share their favorite holiday traditions. There were so many amazing responses and it was such a pleasure reading each and every one of them! Below is what each of the winners had to say:

Congratulations ladies! Bethany will be in touch with you shortly! Thanks to everyone that entered and thank you again for sharing all your great traditions! Happy holidays to you all!

Congratulations Allison! You’ll be hearing from the lovely ladies at TapeSwell regarding your prize soon.

Thanks to everyone for entering and don’t forget, you can still get 10 % off your TapeSwell order by using code: T&T at checkout. Also, if you haven’t already seen it, be sure to watch this short clip including 7 tips for how to ship your holiday gifts. Happy shipping everyone!

Images by Emily Steffen

As if the Cup of Cheer cup sleeve freebie from Bethany of b*spoke weren’t enough, we’ve got another giveaway to kick off today! Bethany is generously offering TWO readers a pack of printables from her Emmy Lu Printable Shop. The winners will receive printables of their choice including a calendar, a set of notecards, recipe cards and gift tags.

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To enter: Visit the Emmy Lu Printable Shop to see all her beautiful goods then come back here to answer the following question:

The holidays are all about friends, family and traditions. What’s your favorite holiday tradition and why?

Be sure to include your email address along with your first name and last initial. Only one entry per person please!

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Giveaway closes Wednesday, December 15th at 10pm PST. One lucky winner will be randomly selected from the comments and announced Friday, October 17th. Best of luck!

Congrats to Mckay on winning, you should be hearing form Minted soon! If you didn’t win, don’t despair we have a few more fun giveaways before the year is out!

Congratulations to Britta, I will pass on your email to Lindsay and she will be in touch with you shortly.

For the rest of you, I still have some exciting news! Lindsay is offering a Twig & Thistle readers $10 off for the month of November on any custom or template designs. Just enter in code “Twig” at checkout to receive the discount.

As I mentioned earlier, I have an exciting giveaway to announce today. Lindsay Nicole Design, one of our lovely new sponsors, has offered to award a lucky winner one free Blogger template ($40 value). *Note: Templates are for Blogger/blogspot blogs only.

Lindsay specializes in custom and template blog designs. From design concept to installation, she creates a blog that fits both the authors personal and written style. The winner will receive:
• A fully-funtional, unique blogger template – they can choose any template from her collection!
• Complete Installation of new template
• Customization of pictures and blog title in blog header
• Specialty fonts on header and post-titles (as shown in template preview)
• Setup of standard widgets (About, Archive, Labels, Followers)
• Unique background pattern (as shown in template preview)
*The winner can also choose to add-on extra custom features at their own expense (available add-ons listed here)

This is a great prize and a fantastic opportunity if you’ve wanted to revamp or start a blog of your own and don’t have all the skills or tools to design one.

To enter to win:
1. Visit the Lindsay Nicole Design Studio to see her template shoppe.
2. Leave a comment at the end of this post telling us what your favorite blog is (not including Twig & Thistle – obviously! wink!)
3. Include your email address along with your first name and last initial. Only one entry per person please!

Giveaway closes Friday, November 12th at 10pm PST. One lucky winner will be randomly selected from the comments and announced Monday, November 15th.

Good luck everyone!

Everyone’s stories of who they’d take in a hot air ballon if given the chance were touching, hilarious and inspiring. I enjoyed reading each and every comment and I honestly think this was by far the most entertaining giveaway yet. Thank you to everyone who entered! And now, for the winner…

Congratulations to Tanya, you are one lucky lady! I will be in touch with you shortly. If you aren’t Miss W., you can still purchase your own print or cards through the Small Talk shop and get updates by visiting the blog.

I’ve got an exciting giveaway today to brighten your Tuesday morning! This one comes from the incredibly talented Alyssa Nassner of Small Talk Studio. You might remember me gushing about her craft inspired prints. Well, Alyssa’s recently added some new prints, cards and notebooks to her Etsy shop.

To give back, she’s generously giving away alimited edition Up and Away Print along with a set of  Delightful Foxes Cards. How charming are both of those?! I just love those two foxy foxes!

To enter to win:
1. Visit the Small Talk Studio Shop to see all her beautiful goods.
2. Leave a comment at the end of this post telling us who’s the one person you’d take on a hot air ballon ride if you got the chance.
3. Include your email address along with your first name and last initial. Only one entry per person please!

*Contest is now closed Giveaway closes Tuesday, October  26th at 10pm PST. One lucky winner will be randomly selected from the comments and announced Friday, October 29th.

Good luck everyone!

Congratulations Kiki for winning the giveaway, I’ll be in touch shortly!

For those of you that didn’t win, you’re still in luck! Silhouette is offering two great discounts (see below for details). The first is good from now until September 30th and the second from October 1st through the 4th. Enter code: TWIG at checkout. Thanks for playing everyone and thanks to Silhouette for a great giveaway!

I’m signing off early this week to attend a going away party for a friend. I hope you all have a great weekend and see you next week! xoxo, Kathleen

Ok peeps, this is our biggest giveaway yet and I have been so excited to share it with you! I was recently given a Silhouette Cutting Machine to test out and review. If I wasn’t happy with it I could send it back, no questions asked. Um, ok!

I’d seen similar machines on the market and had actually looked into purchasing the Silhouette a while back but wasn’t entirely convinced. This was the perfect opportunity for me to see it what it could really do. The Silhouette works just like a printer but instead of printing your artwork, it cuts it. The best part is that there are no cartridges – you create your own text and shapes. Plus, it comes with images and even more available to purchase online! Being a designer, I wanted complete control over the designs and I have all the tools I need to create custom designs so that’s why this particular one appealed to me most.

They just launched their Mac software so I haven’t had a ton of time to test out all the features but so far I am overwhelmingly pleased with the results. I’ve managed to cut out 200 envelope liners in 45 minuets which normally would have taken me at least five hours. I cut out perfect leaf shapes without using an x-acto knife and even a box template which can be a bit time consuming.

There are so many things that this little machine can do and I honestly can NOT wait to try them each out. You can purchase vinyl to cut and use to create custom displays in your home. You can even use the vinyl to adhere to glass and create custom etchings! You can buy Tattoo Paper to make temporary tattoos as well as heat transfer paper for adding designs to fabric. Seriously, the possibilities are endless!

Above is a quick gift I wrapped for a friend who bought her first home. I wanted a unique embellishment that would be indicative of the momentous occasion. Keys seemed like an obvious choice and I thought they’d make a pretty addition. I love how it turned out and with the Silhouette it was super simple to do.

So, here’s the EXCITING part, Silhouette is giving away a machine to ONE lucky winner!!! That’s a $299.99 value! The gift includes the machine, software for Windows XP/Vista and Mac, 2 cutting mats, a blade and a $10 gift card to their online store. WOWZA!

There are three ways to enter:

1. Visit the Silhouette website to view all the creative possabilities. Come back here and tell us what you’d make with your Silhouette by leaving a comment at the end of this post.
2. Blog about it with a link back to this post, then come back and leave a comment with the link.
3. Mention it on Twitter or Facebook using the links below, and then come back and leave a link in the comments.

Be sure to leave your email address and your first name and first inital of your last name (i.e. Stacy P) in the comments. Winner must be in the USA and only one winner per household.

Tweet

Competition closes Wednesday, September 29th at 5pm PST. The winner will be randomly drawn from the comments and announced Thursday, September 30th. Good luck to you all, I’m so excited! I’ll be sharing some more projects over the next week so stay tuned!

The contest is now closed!

Hi gang! Remember those super cool Lost Posters by Ty Mattson that I posted about a few months back? Well lucky for us, the folks over at ABC teamed up with him and are now selling them online at the abc.com store. Right now the smoke monster poster is available and the others are soon to follow. Ty was also fortunate enough to meet up with most of the Lost cast at LOST LIVE: The Final Celebration, here’s a pic of him getting his business card from Daniel Faraday!

Some other exciting news, the lovely ladies at The Bright Side project are in the middle of their month long series of featuring some of their favorite bloggers. I was asked to submit 10 of my favorite things and you can now enter to win a few of them for yourself! One lucky winner will receive a set of 20 personalized letterpress recipe cards from Petite Press, Two prints from artist Alyssa Nassner and a ‘Hello’ wood sign by artist William Dohman!

Is it wrong that I want to enter my own name?! Seriously, the prizes this month have been amazing and the series has been so much fun to follow. I’ve read about so many of my favorites and discovered more blogs to watch! Be sure to stop on over for a chance to win some of the fabulous prizes and say hello to the lovely ladies of The Bright Side Project.

I have an exciting giveaway to announce today! In honor of Mother’s Day, the lovely ladies at TapesWell are generously offering two combo packs of coordinating decorative tapes to be awarded to one very lucky winner; one for the winner and one for their mother (or friend)! How sweet is that?! The combos come in a reusable canister and will make the perfect gift for mom. With so many designs to choose from and loads of “Tacky Ideas” to be inspired by, this is a fantastic prize!

My personal favorites are the Black & White Lace and  the Leaf Medley & Faux Bois Sets. To enter, visit TapeSwell and tell us which of the combo packs is your favorite. Have a favorite memory of mom? We’d love to hear that too!  Giveaway ends this Friday, April 30th at 12pm PST and I’ll announce the winner Monday, May 3rd. Good luck everyone! *CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED

Happy Monday to all of you, hope you had a fantastic weekend! I wanted to start the week off with yet another beautiful piece of letterpress work. This replication of the Roman Coliseum was designed by Cameron Moll and entirely made up of type. This stunning piece of art took Cameron approximately 25o hours to type set. He thoughtfully used only characters from the Goudy Trajan and Bembo Pro fonts which are Italian and Latin type cases respectively. also in celebration of the poster’s release Cameron is also hosting a super giveaway, including 2 iPads, a limited edition martian poster and dribble invites.

These posters are available for purchase on Cameron’s site and come in either white or black. Interesting side note, Bryce Knudson of Bjørn Press who printed these also letterpressed our wedding invites – small world!

Congratulations ladies, I’ll be in touch with you both soon.

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I’d also like to say a big thank you to all our Twig & Thistle sponsors. They help keep the blog running and allow me to do what I do here. Show them some love and check out what these fine merchants have to offer. …Also, if you’re interested in becoming a sponsor send me a note and I can fill you in on all the details.

Garnish Your place for all things packaging and inspiration.

Hello! Lucky One of my favorite letterpress companies of all time! Plus, don’t miss Euince’s wedding in Martha Stewart Weddings Spring issue and see more behind the scenes photos on the Hello! Lucky blog.

Tape Swell An unending supply of adorable tape. Be sure to check out their three newest patterns in the ad to the left!

The Vintage Pearl Beautiful handmade and customized jewelry

Kitty Caller The best $o.99 you’ll ever spend! Kittens that meow when you dial – adorable!

Hello, hello! My goodness it feels like I’ve been gone for ages! I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and festive New Year celebration. I managed to squeeze in some rest and relaxation with both sides of our families and it was a great long break. In honor of the new year and fresh beginnings I wanted to start things off with a giveaway!

In the midst of all the holiday cheer Twig & Thistle had it’s 1st birthday! I had the best intentions to do some grand event but the day slipped by without much notice. So, I’ve decided to celebrate the blogversary this first week back. I went to one of my favorite paper stores here in Seattle and bought a few things that I would love to own myself and am giving away this little gift to one lucky winner. The set includes a beautiful fabric covered notebook from Elum, a set of 6 letterpress thank you note cards by Hello Lucky and twenty-five polka dot fabric thumbtacks from Girl of All Work.

In order to win, please answer the following question by Friday, January 8th, 2010. **Contest is now closed**

What one thing would you like to accomplish this year?

*The winner will be announced Monday, January 11th, 2010. Best of luck!

I can’t thank you all enough for your generous support and readership over the last year. This has been an incredible learning experience and adventure for me. There is something so special about sharing my love of design, weddings and crafts with an audience that is as equally as interested. Thank you all so much and here’s to another exciting year!

xoxo, Kathleen