June Give-away

The House of Mouse Monthly Give-away is back!
This is your chance to win a FREE MOUSE
Every month! Hooray!!



The winner of the June Giveaway
can choose ANY mouse from my store
worth up to $35 as their prize!



To enter this months giveaway all you need to do is
leave a comment under this post
telling me about your favourite mouse or mice
from my store The House of Mouse

(you can choose more than one)
Easy!

You can also check out my flickr page
to see every design I have ever made!

You can enter the Give-away
as many times you want.


This competition is open to everyone!
My shop is international, I will ship to anywhere in the world.

The winner will be announced on June 30th

My Store: The House of Mouse

COMPETITION CLOSED
Winner to be announced soon!

The House of Mouse is open!

Thank you to all my friends and fans for your patience while I took some time off to be a full time mummy! The House of Mouse is now open again. Over the next few days I will be re-listing the mice I have in stock, as well as a few new designs as well. Watch this space :)

The "Win a Mouse" give-away will also be back tomorrow!

Click here to visit my store

~-~

Here's a little photo of my boy to make you smile
You can visit my personal blog to see more photos of Declan

Last chance to buy from The House of Mouse

Hi everyone! I just wanted to let you know I will be closing my store on Sunday so I can take some time off before our baby boy is born. I hope to reopen in the summer once I know how much time I will have for The House of Mouse while being a full time mommy.

Just letting you know in case you want
to grab a mouse before I close shop for a while.

I also want to say a big thank you to everyone for all your support, and to all my wonderful customers for giving so many of my mice new loving homes. In the summer I will be back with lots of new designs and more silly mouse fun.

I will keep blogging when I can, and you will certainly get to see photos of our boy when he is born! Keep watching this space for more info!

Hugs and cookies,
Anna

The House of Mouse

~

December Giveaway Winner...

Once again the monthly giveaway was a huge success!
Thank you to everyone the commented for your chance to win!

The prize goes (as always) to a person chosen at random using the random generator

And the winner is...
4smartmonkeys

Congratulations!!

Your prize is ANY mouse from
my store* worth up to $40!

That's it for this years giveaways! I am going to take a little break from giving away mice because my store will be closing for a few months when our first child is born in February. When I reopen - which should be by the summer - I will continue the giveaway marathon!

Thank you to everyone who entered over the last 8 months,
I wish that I could give you all a free mouse!

Last chance to enter the December Giveaway

Today is your last chance to enter the December Giveaway

The winner of the December Giveaway
can choose ANY mouse from my store
worth up to $40!

Click HERE to enter


Good luck!

8,000 hearts!

Marking another milestone on my Etsy journey. Today I hit 8000 shop hearts. Thank you to everyone who has given my store so much love, your encouragement keeps me going every day!

The August Giveaway winner is...

Once again the monthly giveaway was a huge success! Thank you to everyone the commented for your chance to win!

And the winner is...
BeautifulBridget

Congratulations!!

Your prize is ANY mouse from
my store* worth up to $40!

Thank you to everyone who entered, I am sorry that I can't give you all a free mouse. But don't be too sad, there is another chance for you to win coming tomorrow in the September Giveaway!

700 Sales!

Well I can hardly believe it! I made my 700th sale yesterday evening. Thank you to all my wonderful customers!! What a milestone :D

MY MICE ARE IN MAXIM!!!

Ok, so I might be a tad overexcited... but still! Thanks to my friends Nikki and Steph who sent me copies!

Learn more about the Stitch Wars Exhibition

Doctor Mouse

Featured in the Storque!

I am so happy today because I have been featured in the Etsy blog "The Storque" in the Studio Tour series. This is a HUGE honor and I was so excited when FrucciDesign asked me if I would like to be interviewed by her. It has been a nail biting couple of weeks while I waited for it to be published. You can read the whole interview with me and see some photos of my studio by clicking here.

Featured by BeJeweledByCandi

Dreams in Turquoise and Jade

Many thanks to Candi for featuring my store in her blog. Candi sells beautiful jewelery in her store BeJeweledByCandi Check out her blog for the whole interview with me.

Finding some balance - an update

A couple of weeks ago I wrote in this post that I needed to find some balance between my business and home life. I am happy to say things are going quite well so far. I invested in a new iPhone which I now keep my entire schedule on, it even beeps at me when I need to do something - so no more wasting too much time on the computer! It also has all my various lists on it , so no more lost scraps of paper with important details on them.

I figured out a schedule and am to stick to it, which is having some great results! The house is much tidier, I am cooking healthy meals now, I haven't seen the inside of my microwave for weeks! I am also finding extra time for things I was too busy for before.

This year is getting off to a very good start, I have had several requests for blog interviews and even an article in a Dutch crafting magazine (I'll let you know when they are published) I have so many custom orders that I am selling faster than I can make them at the moment. It seems the House of Mouse is now unstoppable! I can't wait to see what happens next.

Over 5000 hearts

I have been watching my Etsy store hearts steadily make their way to 5000 for the last week or so. When I went to bed last night they were somewhere near the 4970 mark so I didn't think I would get there very soon.

Then last night I made it into a front page treasury and my store hearts jumped up to 5021! I don't know who's treasury it was because it had expired by the time I looked for it, but whoever you are thank you so much! It made my day to wake up well over my target number of hearts for this month.

Experimenting with backgrounds

I have been getting tired of my plain old white and grey backgrounds recently. So I decided to try out something new. I made a larger light box and started to play around with the macro setting on my camera.

I plan on using other backgrounds depending on the mouse I am photographing. So maybe a map as background for my traveling mouse and some christmas presents for my christmas mice...

This is Mr and Mrs Applecheeks the Librarian mice, now with new background!

My new toy!

I splashed out on a new toy a couple of weeks ago. A button making machine from buttonboyinc and parts for 1,000 one inch buttons. The machine arrived very quickly and in perfect condition, and I must say it is such fun to play with! I have been making all kinds of new buttons for my store with it. I can also make any custom mouse button you can imagine!

Where the mice live...

I decided to make a Google map of all the places my mice live in the world... just for fun. So here they all are! Click on a map to see a larger pic.

The world

USA and Canada

EuropeAustralasia

I've been Tagged!

As you might have noticed, blogs have been getting tagged all over the place recently! In fact, I am the one of the last people I know to get tagged. (which says something about my blog promotions, I think I need to work on that...)

I was tagged by Sassy Soaps and Such She makes handmade soaps and dolls. I couldn't resist this mousy soap! (I wonder why!)





So here are the rules of being tagged:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are 7 random facts about me!

1. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher
2. In my spare time I perform improvised comedy (like "Who's Line is it Anyway?") on stage in Amsterdam City Center.
3. My middle name is Juliet.
4. When I am sewing I have to have a dvd or audio book playing or I get bored quickly.
   
5. I made my first mouse exactly one year ago today.
6. Before I made mice I was a professional oil painter www.annagreaves.com
7. I was born with hypermobility in all my joints. This means that all the joints in my body flex further than a normal persons do (different from being double-jointed). This makes me very flexible but it also means that my muscles have to take a lot more of the strain on every day movement, so I often suffer from muscle pain and RSI.

Now to tag some of my blog friends...

1. My little Bird
2. ArtMind
3. FleurFatale
4. Daydream Glass
5. PinkPatrice Boutique
6. Sock Monkey Jungle
7. Beads in the Belfry
   

Win a Mouse!

If you read this blog regularly then you will know I did a craft fair at the weekend... Artmind, a friend of mine suggested that I run a competition to get people to spend some time at my table. It was a very popular competition so I have decided to run it on my blog too!

WIN A MOUSE!

Can you guess how many felt mice feet are in this jar? The closest guess wins a mouse! If you win you can choose any mouse from my store to be your prize! To enter the competition just put your guess in a comment under this post. If you don't have a blogger account please remember to include your email address or etsy shop name in your comment . I need to be able to reach you if you win. ;)

Competition closes on October 21st 2008

*In the case of a draw I will choose the winner at random from the correct answers.

This weeks challenge...

I am a member of several teams on Etsy, and one of the most active teams is the European Street Team (EST). Each week someone from our team hosts a challenge on their blog, they pick a theme and then the EST members that want to make listings for their shop based on the theme.

This weeks "Boss" is Arctida and she picked the theme "Science Fiction" I had the perfect mouse in mind to make... so let me introduce to you Darth Vader Mouse!

Little Darth Vader Mouse has fallen to the Dark Side of the force. He comes complete with leather clad outfit and red lightsaber.

Darth Vader Mouse is made from fake leather, silks, ribbon, beads, glue, plastic and stuffed with polyfil.

He stands approximately 2.5 inches tall (6.5 cm)