Let me start with the important stuff: the giveaway.
It's always a bit of a challenge to find something interesting to give away. There have been years I made something, years I bought something and years I ordered something and had it directly shipped to the winner. I think mostly my birthday giveaways have been about the things that fascinated me at the time.
Now I have been praising the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbooks on and off on this blog lately. Mostly because they are perfect for people like me, and by that I mean people who find it hard to just stick to one medium. If you like to switch between pencils, paint, markers, mixed media and everything in between in one book, then Seawhite is the one to get.
If you are just a watercolour painter, then please get a 'real' watercolour book. If you are a sketch artist, then please get a good drawing paper. If you like collage and acrylic, you might like to get one of those mixed media papers.
But if for you, like me, the world of art supplies is like a banquet that you cannot possibly choose only one course from, then get something like the Seawhite paper. By this I just want to say that the books aren't perfect, they are just really well suited for me.
Their books come in different formats of which the square big and thick ones are my favorite. Unfortunately they would also cost a fortune to ship around the world, so I decided on something a bit simpler, namely their Eco Sketchbooks.
These simple cahier style sketchbooks have craft covers and 32 pages of paper each. They are staple bound and come in three sizes (as far as I know): A6, A5 and A4. They should be easier to ship in a regular envelope and that way I can make this giveaway available to everyone that wants to join.
What can you win? Well, basically the above photograph! I will give away one of each size sketchbook, so you will get three sketchbooks in one giveaway! How cool is that?
There's only two things you have to do to be in the draw:
1) Comment that you want to win so I can put your name on the list.
2) Check back here in two weeks to see if you have won.
That's it. I will draw a winner on Friday the 21st of April. The winner will then have another week to contact me either through the contact form in the side bar or by mailing me directly at c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl. If the winner has not contacted me before the 28th of April I will draw another winner. Those are the rules and I'm sticking by them!
Now for the second part of the post: the blog break.
I will be away from this here blog until the draw on the 21st. This is because I'm not only giving away something to you for my birthday, but to myself as well, namely a vacation to the south of the Netherlands to a beautiful place called Valkenburg. I will be there a little over a week mostly walking and photographing until I drop. You know, the way I spend all my vacations! ;-)
I know, I know... my giveaway to myself is way more generous than the one I'm giving to you, but at least you can count on some interesting slide shows of a whole different region of my country when I get back.
I will only be there for a little over a week, but right after my vacation I have to get back to full work days and there won't be time to do blogposts, so I might as well just take the full two weeks off from the blog and save myself a lot of stress.
And that's all I have to say today. I hope I will make someone happy with this giveaway. I hope my vacation will be wonderful. I hope my birthday in the south will be interesting. I hope those of you who celebrate Easter have a blessed time and I hope to find you all here in two weeks, alive and happy.
Until then I wish you a wonderful and artsy day!