I’m sponsoring a giveaway over at cute blog Hawaii Kawaii just now. Head on over for a chance to win a big prize pack containing a Busy Bee Organiser, Tokyo Shopping guide zine, Cakeify phone charm and Happy Orange card, plus assorted badges, stickers and gift wrap!

Which makes me realise it’s been a while since I had a giveaway on this here blog. I will think of something fun to do soon.

It’s that time again – Free Swatch Day on Spoonflower. Starting right now*, for the next 24 hours you can buy a swatch of any design on the Spoonflower marketplace for zero pence – you don’t even have to pay shipping!

If you’ve been thinking of making something with my fabric, you can check out the pattern size and colours, and you can order it on any of the fabric base options, from silk to canvas. You could also buy one of the thousands of other awesome designs on site, or upload your own.

Swatches are 8″x8″ so there’s enough for very small projects – there are some great ideas of things to make on this Flickr thread.

I can’t decide what to order – I’ll probably be boring and get one of my designs on a different base to add to my swatch book. According to Spoonflower, the above are my most popular designs.

Let me know if you order any of mine!

*If I got my time zones right.

I added some new banners to my blog, so there are now 6 to collect throughout the day!

I used to love checking up on the Google Tea House Fox so for any fellow nutcases, here is a contest! First person to list all 6 of my banners in the comments gets an exciting prize pack. Seriously! Each banner is up for a different part of the day and most for a few hours. I will tell you there’s one in the witching hour.

Have fun!

PS. I should mention this is an open contest with no end date, up until such time as I redesign the site. I don’t expect anyone’s going to be sitting up for 24 hours to win :)

I may have spoken too soon about being back. While things are healing up nicely, it’s a lot slower than I hoped so I’m not getting nearly as much done as I would like (especially emails! sorry if you’re waiting for a reply).

In the meantime, I’m doing another fabric giveaway. This was really fun last year and I could do with some awesome questions to keep me entertained. As before, I am giving away one yard of any fabric of your choice from my range at Spoonflower. That includes all the designs above, and more!

To enter, just visit my Formspring page (or use the form below) and ask me a question about anything – my illustration, design work, freelance life, favourite colour, meaning of life, whatever you want to know. You can ask as many as you like and the question I enjoy answering the most will be the winner. That could be because it’s funny, or intriguing or difficult or easy :)

Important! Once you’ve asked your question COME BACK HERE and leave a comment stating what question you asked and which fabric you would choose (you can change your mind if you win). You can enter as many times as you ask questions, just make sure I know which questions are yours. Please don’t leave your email address in the Formspring question – you’ll get picked up by spammers.

As with last time, I will also pick up to 5 runners-up, who will each receive some goodies from my shop.

You’ve got til midday (BST) on Monday 25th April to enter. Good luck!

The small print

- prize is any of my designs printed on 1 yard of quilting weight cotton plus shipping to wherever you live, worldwide. The winner can also pay me the difference for an alternative choice of base cloth (see Spoonflower’s available fabrics)

- I reserve the right to not answer questions I feel are too personal or otherwise problematic for me.

<a href=”http://www.formspring.me/marcelinesmith” _mce_href=”http://www.formspring.me/marcelinesmith”>http://www.formspring.me/marcelinesmith</a>

If you’ve been wanting a copy of my book, then how about getting one for free! I’m having a giveaway over at Super Cute Kawaii with Monsieur Le Bun, where one lucky winner will get a copy of the printed book and lots of kawaii stuff from Japan too. And there’s PDF copies for the runners-up. What are you waiting for? You know you want those Petit Cheese KitKats! Click here to enter.

PS. There’s also 20% off my book at Lulu this week for UK orders. Just use the code HAPPYUK305 at checkout.

Finally, some winners! Congratulations to Holly, Caroline, Sue in Melbourne and BrassyDel. I’ll email you all soon, or you can save me the effort by sending your postal address to me (hello AT askingfortrouble.org). Don’t forget to let me know if you just want the fabric or if you want me to sew it up for you (the latter may take a couple of weeks as my desk is covered in eBay stuff!).

Thanks everyone who entered for sharing your plans and goals – I hope you’re all successful! And look out for a repeat of my ‘win a yard of any of my Spoonflower fabrics’ contest, probably around my birthday in March.