It’s time to be thinking about the One World One Heart Giveaway again. I say thinking, because it does not kick off until the middle of January, but if you are thinking of taking part again, as I am, now is the time to do the preparation. In my case that means think about, prepare and make some gifts to give away on here.
So what is One World One Heart? The event was started in 2007 by Lisa (oceandreamer) and this is her description of it (original here)…
“I created this event in 2007. The original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way. 2007 had roughly 85-90 participants and many connections were made because of it……friendships that are still going strong.
We had a strong showing the first year for sure, and then in 2008 we had just about tripled that number.
This is more than wanting to win something…….that is only the means…….in the end it’s about finding kindred spirits. Someone who may be fairly new to blogging, not sure how to navigate, find others and have others find them….Some are long time bloggers and in some cases well known in the art community. Whatever the case it brings all of them together. This is an INTERNATIONAL event that has and had participants from the US, Canada, France, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Malaysia, Brazil, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, England,Wales, Slovenia and more. It transcends geographical location, socio economics, political affiliation, religious beliefs……it’s a coming together like the giant community we are on this planet. If only it took a simple giveaway to create PEACE everywhere, in the mean time here we give from our hearts. We are not solving the worlds problems nor are we curing anything nor are we changing the world. We are merely generating a closer community between humans through blogging. What more could I ask for, my little idea has surpassed my wildest dreams of what it could become.
I don’t like rules but sometimes there needs to be at least guidelines to keeping things cohesive and fair for everyone.
You don’t need to be an artist to participate each year, this is open to everyone. What it’s not meant for is self promotion. Meaning that the mission of this event is to meet new people and them meet you, rather than be a commercial for each persons specific endeavors. Many people have links to their websites, Etsy sites etc. already on their blog therefore the “visitor” can click on those to find out more about what a person does. The aim is for the event post itself to be about welcoming and showing what each visitor has a chance to win by stopping by…..AND giving the visitor a chance to read and learn more about each person along the way.
It is almost like being in a huge convention room where you meet and mingle – only the “hello my name is” badge is each persons blog.”
Those of us who took part last year had enormous fun. We met new people who we would never have met ordinarily (on the net, of course), and we were able to read their blogs. Because most of the folk were crafters or artists , but not all of them, those aspiring artists (like me on this blog) were able to pick up tips, learn about new crafts and hone our skills with advice from our new friends. It has been impossible to keep up with the 200 odd blogs that I visited last year, but I have managed to keep up with a few. I’m really looking forward to ‘meeting up’ with everyone again and being introduced to lots of new folk.
If you would like to take part, please follow this link and read Lisa’s instructions. As she says, they look exhaustive, but they aren’t…its all just commonsense. If you sign up, give me a shout, as I think I might add my odd participants list here too…I’ll think about it.
To see my blog entries for last years event, look here.
CREATIVE RAINBOWS 