Trollbeads Retailer Event ~ Saturday 29th November - Newport, South Wales (UK)

Lucky Trollbead Fans could be heading to South Wales in less than 2 weeks for Jeffries Winter Wonderland Event held at their store in Newport, South Wales on Saturday 29th November.

If you're thinking of going the shop is within walking distance from the train station, which is on the main train line so there are fairly decent connections if you don't mind travelling.

For those who do make the trip there will be prize draws, festive fun, a free white jewellery box for any purchase over £150 (as long as stocks last - get there early to secure), promotions, museum beads and a large selection of unique and production beads plus the chance of some free gifts AND there will be fizz and nibbles!!

Sadly I won't be able to go.  It's not my boiler this time that's stopping me, but my day job, as I'll be doing a lot of travelling myself over the next few weeks and unfortunately none of my trips are taking me in the right direction!  

Charity Raffle for Sparkle 

If you can't attend this lovely event (and live in the UK), there still might be a treat in store for you!  Jeffries are hoping to raise lots of money for the local children's charity Sparkle by holding a raffle with the prize being... the Ultimate Collector's Case - Schmuckvitrine!

Raffle Tickets are £5 each and you can buy them here, all details plus the terms and conditions are on their website, the draw will be on Christmas Eve and the winner announced on Christmas Day - there's only one drawback...

If you win you need to either pick this beauty up from the shop, or they will ship it to a UK address, but sadly they cannot ship internationally due to the size and weight.

Charity Raffle to win a Trollbeads Ultimate Collector's Case!!

I'm told this case is no longer being made, and it is literally the last one to leave Trollbeads UK HQ!

Unfortunately it was slightly damaged whilst in transit to Jeffries, I'm told it's only minor damage on one side but obviously they couldn't swap it for an undamaged one as there aren't any more left to swap it with!!

If you would like to make a donation to Sparkle regardless of where you live, there is also a button on the Charity Event page for that too, there's no minimum (or maximum) donation, so if you've a spare £1, it all goes to a good cause!

I can't go to the event but I've already bought my own ticket for the draw!

Will you be going to the event; or donating to Sparkle; or

buying a raffle ticket for the Schmuckvitrine? Or maybe all 3?!

Share a Christmas Card 2012

In the 2011 Share a Christmas Card event 11,690 cards were registered with Trollbeads Universe as being received by fellow trollbead fans, I only became aware of this phenomenon when Pauline wrote about it in her Guest Spot.  

I decided to join in the fun for 2012 and to have my own cards made; unfortunately they didn't arrive until the 27th November, and as I was going away for work the next day for the rest of the week, I posted them without taking any photos for the blog as I was cutting it very fine for the cards to get there in time (and for me to get to the post office before it shut)!  I used the photo to the left on the front of the cards and a personal printed message inside from me.  I also wrote another message inside the card and as a last minute thought added my blog url in case anyone fancied a read!

The 2012 event details can be found here for anyone who wants to still join in.  Essentially you register your details to receive 5 names and addresses from all over the world, you then send those people a Christmas Card (or a postcard) with your message and your unique Troll ID which you receive when you register.  Your name and address will be sent to 5 others who will be able to send you a card too.

When that person receives your card, they will (hopefully) register your card on the website and this in turn gives you a "lottery ticket" for the draws that take place every day from 1st - 31st December 2012.  When you receive a card, you in turn register their Troll ID and you can write them a greeting in return.  The returned greetings and winners are also posted on the website.

  

So far I've received 2 cards (both from Italy) out of the 4,042 cards received worldwide.  3 of my cards have arrived; 2 to the Netherlands and 1 to Austria.  I pre-registered for the event so was lucky enough to be given 10 addresses in total, so I am eagerly awaiting news that the other 7 have arrived - 2 to the US, 1 to Canada, 2 to Italy, 1 to Germany and 1 to Lithuania.  I'm really pleased I received a name and an address from Lithuania as that is where my favourite World Tour bead designs came from.

It's nice to be able to read the greetings people send each other when they receive their cards and it's fun to see who has won the draws and what bead they are going to receive.  I think of it as a Trollbead Community Advent Calendar that lasts the full month of December!

Triple Celebration

In Blindfold Bracelet Challenge I'd joked about my stars being too closely aligned (they got stuck to each other on my trial bracelet), and in Written in the Stars my first sentence was that I'd had an amazing week, and as good as winning Taurus in an Ebay auction was... it wasn't the only astounding thing that happened that week.

I sometimes enter the Facebook Friday competition run by Fable Trading (interesting timeline here of when Trollbeads came to the UK through Fable Trading).

On one such Monday I scanned the internet on my phone at lunchtime, as you do when you're munching on your sandwich... it was a very late lunch as it had been quite a busy day...  Cue much jumping up and down, and I fear some "sqeeing" (sic) when I discovered that I'd won!!!

That evening I poured over the glass beads in Price Group I trying to decide which bead to choose, it was much harder than I thought it would be given that I still have so many of these on my wish lists.  After much deliberation I chose Skyline from the Hong Kong World Tour, I already had one from this collection when I bought the Dragon and Phoenix bead.

Skyline swiftly arrived just as I was leaving for a work trip 2 days later, what a service!!  I admired it but had to put it safely in my bead box until I returned, it really is a beautiful bead.  You may well have to take my word for this as I had a great deal of trouble trying to photograph it to be able to show this; very tricky bead to capture on a phone camera!

The next thing to happen was a twitter exchange between myself and my fellow blogger Michael Nand who had just celebrated 1,000 page views on his new blog.  He suggested that I should buy myself a new bead when this blog hit it's first milestone, although technically I guess it's the second milestone... as for me the first milestone was that anyone other than myself read it!  

You would be very welcome to follow me on twitter @TrollbeadBlog if you like to tweet, I mostly talk about trollbeads or this blog, but I do sometimes tweet photos that don't make it into the blog.

www.curlingstonesforlegopeople.blogspot.co.uk recorded 1,000 page views exactly the following day, so, hardly needing any encouragement to buy even more beads, I treated myself to a preloved OOAK from another collector.  I haven't bought an OOAK for a while and I do enjoy them!  Again I had trouble photographing this one as well, not sure if I'm just having an "off" day with the camera!

 

So feeling mighty happy about things I continued on my week.

The third achievement of the triple celebration that the title refers to is a personal one, about a year ago I decided that I was carrying around a bit too much weight, nothing serious but something that had bothered me in a "my clothes don't fit me properly anymore" type of way.  As a result of doing something about this - I've been eating healthily for the last year and trying to mould my eating habits into healthy all the time, rather than most of the time, along with ensuring I get in some exercise - I hit my personal goal of a great BMI score on the Wednesday.  Rather pleased I celebrated ironically with a beer and a curry!

So I want to choose a bead to mark my achievement... but what to choose?

Silver Hare and Tortoise? This bead certainly sums up my approach to whole losing weight thing and I like Aesop's fables, it's one of the collection of stories that I like to dip into on my kindle.

Whirling Adventure? One from my wish list and that's certainly what the year has felt like, and much like it's description I certainly seized the moment when I started out.

Or to simply treat myself to something nice to mark the occasion?  I'm going to give this some more thought, (and let my bank balance recover a bit), before making a final decision.  Like the weight loss journey; there's no rush!