Classy Thanksgiving & A GIVEAWAY!

Time's Up!

The winner of the African Plains Elephant Collectible by Tusk is:

#4 Laura

Congratulations Laura! Please send an email with your full name and address at kinnasays@gmail.com to claim this giveaway! Have fun decorating!

My blog is finally up and running and I'd like to celebrate with a giveaway!
(There's no catch, I promise!)

Today's giveaway is a limited edition collectible by Westland Giftware. It's a beautifully hand-crafted and hand-painted African Plains Elephant figurine from Tusk. It's great for urban home decor and collectors! Tusk recently decided to come out with a new line of quality designs, called "New Tusk". And so, you will find that this product is no longer in stock. I absolutely love their line of parade collectibles and the details on this piece are amazing. I am so excited for one of you guys to win it.

Tusk African Plains Elephant Collectible Giveaway
($35-56 value)

One No Ordinary Kinna follower will win a limited edition Tusk African Plains Elephant Figurine Collectible. Giveaway includes:

• 4.5" Tusk African Plains Elephant Figurine

How to Enter

To be entered to win the Tusk African Plains Elephant Collectible Giveaway, all you have to do is follow this blog with an account (see: 'Accepting Followers' in the sidebar) and comment on this post, and you're entered.

Restrictions: This giveaway is open to United States only.

Contest ends Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 8pm PST. One entry per person, please. Winner will be chosen by Random.org, and notified by email (if linked to your account) and through this blog. Giveaway provided by Kiran Saeed.

Good luck you guys!

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Onto our freebie! "Classy Thanksgiving" is a fun kit designed to scrap Thanksgiving, family gatherings and making dinner, but at least half of the pieces can be used for just about anything. As I mentioned earlier this week, this kit is a misnomer. I'm dedicating it to my family. We strive to create the perfect family gathering every Thanksgiving but never quite get it right. I love them. :) So, I apologize if this kit isn't coherent with my other work, but that's just how my family is! Classy and, well, awkwardly funny. :) Another reason that this kit is different from my other collections is because I didn't add an overlay to most of the pages; mainly, so you can select the material and mix it up however you like. If you Google-Image "overlay freebie", you should have plenty to choose from. :) I hope you enjoy it! Just click on the preview to download:

Thank you for stopping by. :)

Quick Update

I've been working on No Ordinary Kinna blog's layout all day, trying to sort out a few bugs. I'm also temporarily caught up in a number of projects; but I want to let you know that the "Classy Thanksgiving" kit freebie should be up no later than Sunday. :)

xoxo

Passport to Delhi

My favorite aunt is pursuing a Master's in International Relations and hopes to work for the United Nations some day. She gave me a call a couple of days ago and told me about her most recent project. Her professor assigned the class to create a blog and log their 'travels' to a far off country. She asked if I could design her blog and I immediately accepted her offer with excitement. I did some research and quickly found myself captured by the world of travel blogging; there is so much rich history all around us. Every blogger's unique experiences and perspectives make each of their stories worth learning about. In fact, one of my favorite authors is National Geographic's Where's Andrew? Travel Blog. He has such a way of writing and his pictures photograph beautifully!

Even though my aunt already had me at blog design, I practically fell head-over-heels when she decidedly told me that her blog theme would be set in India. Coming from India and Pakistan myself, this project just became personal. The first and last time I went to India with my family was nearly 10 years ago. I remember the flagrant, spicy foods and the beautifully crafted sites but most of all, I remember the dirt. There's a word for dirt in Hindi and Urdu that we call "mitthi," which translates to 'the soil of our motherland'. This might sound absurd but when I see India's land covered in dirt, I finally feel at home. Even more so, there's something about the warm scent that fills the air, the kind and hospitable people and the make-shift bazaars that make a trip to India special. It feels right; I feel comfortable. And so, since India is dear to my heart, I knew I would enjoy the design process of the blog that much more. I followed with discussing the color palette and layout with my aunt and jotting down important details. When brainstorming blog titles, I came up with "Passport to Delhi" and we ran with it. My experience with designing this travel blog was a joy and an honor. There are still some kinks to work out but here is the blog design that we decided on together:

I was inspired to travel somewhere adventurous and earthy myself, so some friends and I are planning a road trip to one of California's forests. I can't wait! More on this soon. :)

Day 1 - Countdown to Thanksgiving

Today marks the last day of my freebies during our Countdown to Thanksgiving.. but it's not over yet! To wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, I'm releasing a kit, called "Classy Thanksgiving". But wait just a second.. How classy, you say?

The Office (Season 5, Episode 18) © NBC

Perhaps this classy. Haha actually -- I hate to break it to you but it's kind of a misnomer. Like The Office, "Classy Thanksgiving" is nice, but also kind of awkwardly random. You'll love it; you might not be be a fan. I'll explain this better when it's posted, you'll see! Still, it's a nice little kit designed with the intent to scrap family gatherings and making dinner, but many of the pieces can be used for just about anything. It should be out by the end of the week. :)

I made some basic edger masks a while back and thought it might be neat to share some new and fun, whimsical edgers as well. Not to worry, they're already in high resolution this time. :) Just click on the preview to download:

Day 2 - Countdown to Thanksgiving

I have plans to save up for a new camera so that I can share more than scrapbooking materials with you. Who knows, I might be inspired to pull some colors, patterns or items in some of the pictures and make a kit to share! ;) I'll talk more about this and a fun project I have in mind later.

As promised, here is today's freebie! It's a compilation of random but related things I chose to scrap as a super-mini kit for the month of November. Click the preview to download.

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving break! Don't forget to stop by tomorrow for another freebie! :)

Day 3 - Countdown to Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is so close, I can smell the turkey. And since I can't taste it or even look at it yet, I figured that I can at least talk about it. Hence, I put together a handful of Thanksgiving word arts to share. I hope you will find them useful in your scrapbooking endeavors. I want to give a special shout-out to Kevin and Amanda Fonts for making their absolutely adorable font collection freely available to the public. I also want to give a special shout-out to Scrapbook.com for offering an organized list of quotes for us to incorporate in our layout designs. Simply click on the preview to download:

Day 4 - Countdown to Thanksgiving

My apologies, this post is a little overdue. I was experiencing some internet connection problems earlier. Now that it's back up again, I am thrilled to announce the release of my first mini kit! Anybody who is anybody knows that Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Part 1) has finally hit the screens. (Family-goers beware! It's better suited for mature audiences). To commemorate yet another chapter of the popular series, I chose to make a Twilight-themed mini kit for us to scrap premiere night pictures, movie nights, book clubs and/or fan pages. I hope you enjoy the kit! I really enjoyed making the pieces. :) Click the preview to download.

My favorite embellishments out of this collection are the "vamples." They are a hybrid of the symbolic Twilight apple and.. you guessed it, vampires! Aren't they cute? I also have a few other ideas that I am thinking about designing.. I'll try to have them scrapped and posted as an Add-On to celebrate the next (and last) movie of the series.

On a side note, I do not own the rights to the "Team Jacob" design in the above mini kit. I tried searching for a copyright but was unable to find the rightful designer. By default, I presume that I am permitted to incorporate this in my mini kit. Please, if you have any information on this, as well as any other copyright related issues in my past and future projects that you find have been handled incorrectly, email me at kinnasays (at) gmail.com . I do my research and try to make sure that my ideas are original and if they are (intentionally) not, then I want to make sure that they are credited properly.