Winning My First CHALLENGE!

(And my love for Pink by Design!)

For those of you who are on Facebook, you may have already seen that I did indeed win my first challenge!  Over on the Pink by Design message board, there was a "Cricut-less Challenge."  It was basically a challenge to make anything withOUT the Cricut.  That's kind of strange for some people because at this point, most projects are done with the machine, but recently, I've actually been getting into non-Cricut things just because it's less noisy (and less set-up of the paper on the mat).  Anyway, that thread can be found if you click here.  

I kept checking the board over and over again to see if I was the winner.  It wasn't even posted that there'd be a prize for the winner, but I was still itching to know!  I was actually happy with my project.  It was in a previous entry, but I'll post it again here:

What was great was that I just got the markers and I just got into digi stamps.  Even being a newbie though, I still wanted to win!  I mean, who doesn't want to win?  When I entered the Pink Stamper challenges on National Scrapbooking Day, I wasn't happy with those projects.  I did them very rushed just because of the deadline, and it was during the school year.  Well, I decided to check Facebook one more time last night and since I'm a fan of the Pink by Design page, I saw the notification saying, "Did you win the challenge?" so I checked one last time and saw this:

I just about jumped out of my skin!  I was so exhausted and was on my way to take a shower, but I saw this and was thrilled!  I immediately told Howard, and he was so happy too!  Ahhhh, how exciting!  After my shower, I came downstairs to my desktop to email, and the prize is a $10 gift certificate to Pink by Design (it was originally $5, but then I got another email saying it was a mistake and was supposed to be $10).  The PBD stamp sets are $16.99, but I've only gotten them with a code for a certain percentage off.  Plus, I usually spend enough to get free shipping and it comes VERY quickly with EXCELLENT customer service.  I've emailed them a bunch of times before and after my orders with them!  I love Sarah and Mr. Pink Cricut (her husband, I believe).  They answer any and all questions so quickly (one time it was within minutes of my asking).  Plus, Sarah used to be a teacher too, so she totally understands the life of a teacher!

I can't say enough about this great company!  I know I've written it elsewhere, but before I bought sentiment stamps, I looked at a LOT of different companies.  I checked out the message boards and blogs to see what people used, and I settled on PBD because of the fact that there were a ton of options in terms of the actual phrases but mainly because they did NOT look like they were typical fonts used on Microsoft Word!  If it's going to be plain and unoriginal, I might as well just print it out or write it myself.  I like the fonts that PBD has.  Click here to be taken to the stamp page.  I have 60 days to use it, so I have one in mind that I want (I have some saved in my Wishlist), but I'm going to wait a bit to decide.  Maybe there'll be something I want in the next release!

Anyway, I just had to write about it here because I couldn't believe I actually won!  So exciting!  Stay tuned for some more cards that I've made (and a post about blog candy that I won a few weeks ago)!