Giveaway--A Miniature Easter Egg

Yes, this adorable Easter Egg is OOAK (One of a Kind), and I made it myself so it's totally imperfect! The outside is a luscious spring green, trimmed with gold lace. Inside as you can see, there's a vintage scene of Mr. and Mrs. Easter Bunny.

HOW I MADE IT
I'll tell you how I made it in another post! Can you say, "tutorial"? Suffice it to say, I tried several methods and most of them were abject failures.

HOW TO WIN IT
Starting tomorrow (3/19/2014) you can enter to win. The contest will run for one week. To enter, visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/joannacampbellslan  Under the large picture of me with a Diet Dr Pepper, you'll see a blue box labeled GIVEAWAY. Click on that box and follow the instructions.

Or you can try this link:  http://tinyurl.com/kfvuqdt

Desperately Seeking OOAK

So I'm cruising Pinterest and Etsy looking at dollhouse miniatures, and I keep seeing OOAK by the listings. Wow. I was so impressed by the detailed workmanship. And so many different types of items!

I was thinking to myself, "This OOAK really knows her stuff. She must be crafting from sun up to sun down."

Then I got to thinking, "I bet OOAK is the name of a company. Yeah, that's got to be it. I wonder if they offer tutorials."

In the miniature world, almost all the best artists (and manufacturers) share wonderful tutorials (or "tutes") on their websites. As one of them explained in an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) post, the tutorials are a way of giving back. Another admitted that once someone sees all that's involved in crafting an object, well, the viewer gets to thinking, "I could never do that. I'll cave in and make a purchase."

My dollhouse is definitely OOAK. Whoever made it did not adhere to 1:12. Actually he/she ignored any coherent sense of scale. And guess what? That's been a blessing because it's forced me to make stuff myself. For example, I decided to make these sliding screen doors for the bathroom. This attempt will be scraped for a variety of reasons, but I learned a lot while crafting these doors. I don't mind that they are OOAK, but I do mind that they make the rest of a pretty room look squatty.

Many of the tutorials are in languages other than English. Thanks to modern technology, you can often hit a button and a tutorial will be instantly translated. Even if the translation isn't very good, when added to good pictures, the information is still useful.

So I searched through foreign sites and what do you know? My old friend OOAK kept popping up! Over and over.

Then one night as I was indulging in my new favorite pre-sleep ritual of cruising tutorials, I spied a phrase "one-of-a-kind."

You've probably already sussed out that OOAK is an acronym for "one of a kind."

That got me thinking. We're all OOAK. Everything handmade is OOAK. OOAK has wonderful, intrinsic value, because it's so uniquely human. Even when our work is slightly wonky or imperfect or just plain weird, it's utterly delightful and perfectly imperfect. It's OOAK, a quality worth searching for.

Have you ever misinterpreted an acronym? Or am I the only idiot out there?