And the winner is.......

Drum roll please..... Comment number 7:

Claire from Aisling Designs, who said: "Already like you on FB. And will go off now and tweet and share on FB. Lovely giveaway, and I wish you every success this coming year."

Congratulations Claire :-) I will be in touch about what sort of design you would like.

Thank you so much to everyone who entered and especially those who shared away like crazy!! And as I'm in a fab mood I'm going to extend the 20% off everything in my shop until the end of the weekend!

Happy Birthday to Me.....!

Morning campers (have various old Hi-de-hi lines going through my head today for some reason!)

So, today is my 1 year anniversary of selling on Etsy! I've had an incredible year and it has been getting better and better!

Here are some pics of the last year in the Grace's Favours household:

1st item made & sold - thankfully my photography's improved a bit since then!

The 1st campervan - now our most popular item!

1st attempt at a fascinator

A handmade birthday present

Kids modelling their crowns for the Jubilee

Learning to make fascinators properly!

New bear is MINE!

The latest campervan

I am part of some wonderful teams on Etsy, which has meant I've met some wonderful people along the way, all of whom are really supportive and friendly, which is invaluable when you're working on your own.

There is one person I couldn't have done any of this without and that's my lovely husband Brian, who not only provides all technical and graphics advice & support, but who also has taken on a much greater role in looking after the house and children - thank you Gorgeous!!

To celebrate Grace's Favours being 1 year old not only am I giving away a gorgeous Christmas Wreath but I'm also offering 20% off any item in the shop today only... so any early Christmas shopping you wanted to get started on will save you money too!

We're all going on a summer holiday...

.... Okay, now I'm showing my age with that title aren't I?!?! (Or I could just blame it on my Mum's love of Sir Cliff!)

We're off to Ireland tomorrow to visit my lovely 'out-laws' (don't quite know why my hubby's wonderful parents have always been called that, but it's stuck now!) and I honestly don't know who is more excited... me & Brian or the kids :-)

Brian & his brother Tony braving the sea last summer

Seren & Patrick refusing to leave the blanket!

I've got a ton of sewing to take with me as I'm doing a summer fate when we get back - anyone local to the Forest of Dean if you're around on Sunday 29th July we'd love it if you'd pop in and say hello. I've been so busy with orders that I've not had much chance to build up stock for things like this (which is great in one sense!) so this fortnight is going to be a nice change for me.

The other thing I've been working on this week (and it was a last minute request, so scuppered my chances of blogging for an evening or two!) was a Christmas Wreath which had been asked for by the Etsy UK Publicity team for their 'Christmas in July' event, which is held to promote a select number of UK based Etsy shops to journalists and publicity types in the hope that they will use some of the items in their festive shopping guides!

I was OVER THE MOON to be asked to participate and this morning I sent off my Christmas Wreath:

It is listed in my Etsy shop already because a lovely customer asked me in May (I dream of being that organised!) to put together a wreath for him to send to family in America and I am so pleased now that it was done in time to get into the Christmas marketing timescales.

The other thing that's been quite fun this week has been an order of rainbow VW Campervans:

Lastly I just wanted to finish with an apology... when I started this blog I intended to write a new post at least 2-3 times a week... well I've failed miserably on that score. So my mid-year resolution is to post more often when we get back from holiday (starting with the pre-requisite holiday snaps!)

Hope you have a good couple of weeks with some sunshine!!