Author

Jenni

Browsing
Jenni is a blogger and marketing professional in Portland, Oregon. A Well Crafted Party is a blog about all the little things to celebrate in life. Follow Jenni or A Well Crafted Party with BlogLovin, RSS feed, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Today is a very special day… 
It is the day my Mom was born (a few years ago, of course)! 
Photo of me and my mom at my wedding 5 years ago
Happy Birthday Mom! 
I hope your last year as just a mom was awesome… 
and I hope that your first year as a grandmother is even more awesome!
I love you and am sure glad you were born!
I am REALLY excited about this giveaway! 
When Lisa from
contacted me with the opportunity for a giveaway…well, I think I squealed a little.
Social Couture is one of my favorite places to look for party inspiration and supplies. I have a few party supply items that I absolutely love that have been dropped into my mail box from Social Couture! 
The plum textured runner, hardwood chopsticks and a few other often used items sitting in my entertaining closet are from their site… so, I have NO problem introducing you to the Social Couture site and offering you this fun giveaway opportunity!
{ABOUT THE SITE}
From their website: 
 “Social Couture is an on-line store for home decor and entertaining products.  We provide imaginative party decorations and inspired tabletop ideas, so that throwing a festive party needn’t be such a production and an expense for our customers.  Our single, pre-packaged goal is to deliver a high quality themed party complete with decorations to centerpieces to napkins & plates in an effort to simplify and elevate our customer’s lives.  Our customers will only need to consider their occasion. Once an order is placed a prepackaged theme party will arrive in a box and the entertaining preparation is complete.  The contents of prepackaged box, delivered to the doorstep, can easily be blended into our customer’s style, dining rooms, menu choices and lives.  In an effort to further offer simplicity and choice to our customers, Social Couture also offers a wide variety of other high end party supply products from dinnerware, glasses, flatware and votives to music and unique entertaining products.”
I love that you can choose a pre-designed theme, 
such as the following theme “Girls Night Out,” 
or you can pick and choose products that will coordinate with a theme you already have in mind.
Oh, and another thing I love about their site?
They have customizable PRINTABLE parties available for less than $15… 
like this adorable French Circus theme printable party!
{THE GIVEAWAY}
Social Couture has offered a giveaway for a set of their  
grosgrain napkin rings in the color of the winner’s choice!
  (PERFECT FOR SUMMER PARTIES!)
Pictured Pink and White Grosgrain Napkin Ring
The Red and White Grosgrain Napkin Ring
The color combinations available include: lemongrass, coral, navy/white, red/white, pink/white, lime/white, navy/pink/white (new), green/navy/white (new).
Napkin rings in use in the “Preppy Party” Social Couture Package
 These lovely little napkin holders were also recently featured on House Beautiful!
 {THE RULES}

To win the Grosgrain Napkin Rings of your color 
choice please read the following rules: 

*To win you must have an address from the United States for shipping considerations.*
The contest will run from today (July 8) 
to the end of day (MIDNIGHT PST) Friday, July 15, 2011. 
A winner will be chosen then and announced on Saturday, July 16.
I will contact the winner via e-mail if an e-mail address is given or available… if not the winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize before a new winner will be chosen.
~You have SEVERAL opportunities to win these napkin rings! ~
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS POST FOR EACH ENTRY!  
{Entry Opportunities}
1. Leave a comment telling me which color combination you would choose and what kind of party you would like to use it for! ( If you need some inspiration then you should check out the Social Couture site and see some of the AMAZING parties they have predesigned! 
(If you already do then please leave a comment telling me so!)
3. “LIKE” Social Couture on Facebook 
(Give them a shout out that you came from A Well Crafted Party!)
4. Follow A Well Crafted Party on Twitter   (If you already do then leave a comment telling me so!) 
5. Follow Social Couture on Twitter
That is 5 different opportunities to WIN! 
Remember to please LEAVE A COMMENT on this blog post for EACH entry you have completed! 
 
If you saw the blog yesterday then you saw that my very own *mommy* sent us a fun guest post about saving money by upcycling clothing with a simple, yet fun sewing project.
Well, her sewing bug certainly hit the mark with me and I have been a huge fan of upcycling and creating something from nothing for most of my life. (At one point in my life there was a desire to become a clothing designer. I even made a logo and tags that I sewed into everything I created!)
Photo of a pattern I created for a dress I recently made
As this is one of my biggest hobbies I thought I’d share some links to blogs that I follow that feature upcycling or DIYing fun clothing as well as some links to favorite tutorials.
*If you have any favorites that I am missing I’d love for you to leave a link in the comments!*
LINK #1
To start let me put up a link to a project that I love because I did it! I turned some old tablecloths into a dress for my 27th birthday. Total cost for entire dress $0! Oh, and I made the pattern and did all the sewing and fitting myself so I got to feel incredibly proud that it didn’t fall apart during my night out! Unfortunately I did not create a tutorial for this…
but, it is proof that I’m totally obsessed with this DIY clothing craze!
Me in my handmade birthday dress.
Close up of my hand rolled fabric flowers.
LINKS 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6
Next up are four of my FAVORITE blogs for finding fun sewing or upcycling projects. They are in no certain order as I find equally amazing ideas from all three sites!
2. Grosgrain— Oh dear… I LOVE THIS SITE! She is kind of amazing.
The great things at this site: a month full of FREE PATTERNS, a Frock by Friday , Embellish your Knits Month and a ton of daily inspiration.
3. Sewing in No Man’s Land— Some of the most beautiful sewing I’ve seen in a long time and she shares patterns all the time.
She makes me want a baby girl SO bad. I want to make all the adorable little outfits that she makes for her little one. But, thankfully for me (and my little boy) she also has patterns for women
and adorable little boy pjs!
4. Yours, Mine & Ours— This chic is totally cool. She is all about Free Piling (finding FREE clothing) and thrifting and creating outfits for herself and her family.
I’m really into her outfit posts and her tutorials on how to take-in clothing or alter clothing in ways that make them more palatable to your style and closet.
5. Chic Steals— All kinds of DIY awesomeness. The author of this blog has a funky style with a fashion background and I love seeing all the amazing stuff she DIYs.
6. Made— Okay, this site isn’t just about fashion… there are a ton of amazing posts for parties, home improvement, recipes… etc. BUT, I do love her tutorials and patterns as well. Oh, and it helps that she sews a ton of cute things for BOYS! She even participated in CELEBRATE THE BOY with a TON of tutorials, guest posts and more. Love, love….LOVE this site.
LINK #7
I collect ideas… before the creation of Pinterest I had a file on my computer of photos, tutorials and links that was ridiculous to try to weave through and even harder to post about after losing all of their original poster information. So, I’m a little obsessed about Pinterest and use it ALL the time.
(If you don’t have an account yet and want one please e-mail me
and I will try my best to get you an invitation PRONTO.)
One of my boards on Pinterest is called Sewing and Upstyling and it is where I collect projects that I want to work on or happen to think are pretty awesome. I update it (and my other boards) pretty often so feel free to check it out or follow it!
Here are a couple of my favorite projects from the board (at the moment):
Upcycled T’s turned into bibs from u-createcrafts.com
Reusable Sandwich Bags from wewilsons.blogspot.com
gDiaper insert tutorial from SeeKateSew.com
Are there any amazing sites/projects/tutorials that you think I’d like that I’m missing from this list? Also, what money saving projects are you working on right now?