Sweet Goodness Swaps: August 2007

Thursday, August 23, 2007

And the Winners Are!

Drum Roll Please!!!!!

The Goodness Girls Proudly announce the finalists in our Container Contest portion of our Summer Bucket Full of Fun Swap!

Decorating or creating a unique container was a big portion of the swap and our participants did not let us down, we had everything from boxes, buckets, bags, to balloons (and more) to choose from and it was a VERY VERY hard task as you all were winners!

But a contest is a contest, we had to make a choice so here in reverse order are the winners:

In Third Place, we have Jessie's bag from Jump and Down Blog--vintage fabric, sweet ruffles and wonderful craftmanship won us over on this beauty!! Congratulations Jessie--Rebecca will be sending you some Sweet Goodness Treasures next week!

Next is our Second Place finalist--Linda of Yellow Rose Cottage Blog. This package totally LIFTED us up out of our swap seats when we saw this most inventive packaging for her container! Inquiring minds wanna know how you shipped this Linda!! Totally cool container--congrats on your 2nd place finish!!! Be on the look out for a Sweet Goodness Treat from me next week!!!

Last but not least is our 1st Place winner----Paula from On a Rainy Night. Paula hand crocheted this lovely bag with raffia ( I had no idea you could even do that!), lined it with some sweet yellow and orange fabric and embellished with a hottie looking orange and yellow mermaid! We loved this ultra cute container and wanna give you a round of applause for trying something totally outside of the box for your container!!
Miss Thrifty Goodness will have a Sweet Goodness grand prize pack out to you next week!!

****
Thank you all for participating in our Summer Swap!!

Keep your bloglines set---we will anounce our next (and last swap) of 2007 sometime in September!

Thanks for playing with us this summer!! :)

Now--get busy on your Holiday crafts!!!
YIKES!

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Last Call for pics

Last call for all container photos--If you haven't yet posted your Orange and Yellow goodies, please be sure to do so this week as Friday, August 17th is our deadline date for photos!!! We wanted to give a few participants some extra time that were running late with their packages.

For the sake of time...okay and less work for us Goodness Girls (summer has given us a case of lazyitis....don't worry we will be back to normal in a month or so), we are going to pick the winners with out running a vote from everyone.

In reality--you all are winnners and it's going to be very hard to pick the top 3!!! You all out did yourselves with the creativity of the containers--I don't believe there was any two alike!

We will post the the winner and 2 runner ups NEXT Monday, August 20th (which is also my lil man's 7th birthday...which has nothing to do with anything, I just thought I'd through that in there). So, stop back to see who is the Queen of the Summer Bucket Full of Goodness Swap!!

****

We know many of you are waiting for us to announce our last swap of 2007 and it's going to be a good one---it's totally different than the others that we've hosted so keep your bloglines set to Sweet Goodness Swaps--you won't want to miss out on the fun!!

This one will requre a bit of a commitment so we are going to limit the participants and require a set of criteria to participate-but we haven't ironed out all the details as of yet so again, stay tuned for the announcement in September of our next swap!!

*******

Last but not least, a BIG THANK YOU to all the participants who have made our swaps so much fun and successful!

Your commitment, creativity, and friendship makes all the work worthwhile :)

The Goodness Girls!

PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES

Participation Selection:

We like to have as many participants in our swaps as possible. However, we usually limit each swap to the first 50 sign ups as it becomes very difficult to deal with the amount of email and follow up if the number is larger. Plus a smaller group gives us an opportunity to give more personalized assistance when needed.

For most swaps we allow in any one who would like to join. Some swaps in the past have been limited to those who have successfully swapped with us before or those who are recommended by our previous swappers or known friends.

Those people who have signed up for swaps and HAVE NOT completed them are not invited back. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as the person contacting both us and their partner with their extenuating circumstances or someone dropping out early and our ability to fill their spot in time. We understand that things come up and don't hold this against people but we do tend to not reinvite those who in the past haven't even bothered to contact their partners or send any packages.

Screening Process:

We have started using a questionnaire that needs to be filled out in order to sign up for the swap. This helps us to not only get to know our swappers but to match up partners with similar interests.

We keep a list of those who have swapped with us in the past and use this to try to insure no one gets the same partner they have had in the past to add variety to the swaps.

Other than this we take everyone into consideration and ASSUME they will send a complete and quality swap. We want to give everyone a chance to join in and have fun.

Swapping always involves a bit of risk though all of our swaps have a very high success rate and we have a wonderful core of returning swappers. We do our best to solve all swap issues and assist where needed. We also would like to remind everyone that we do for fun as we enjoy swapping with our creative folks out there and coming up with fun and new swap themes.

We encourage your feedback and thoughts. As we change our swap mailbox with each swap your general comments and feedback can be sent to goodnessshop@gmail.com.

PLEASE READ

Please be sure that when joining a swap that you read the directions thoroughly. Not only do we post them on the site but we also send emails containing swap specifics. While we are all for creative license there are some rules that should be followed including the number of items to be included (more is welcome but try to stay within the budget posted) and the types of items to be included. We will always have at least one hand made item in our swaps. That is the essence of Sweet Goodness!

Thank you and we hope you understand that we do this to insure that everyone has a positive swap experience.

~ Rebecca, Lucy, Heidi, Leigh Ann & Shara