SewMo’.  Congrats to you for winning the free I Heart Handmade market registration!  Now you have the fun decision of choosing which market you’d like to be in: Valentine’s or Spring.  Decisions, decisions…

And for those who didn’t win: we’re sorry.    But we’re glad you played along with us.  We really wanted to give away two free registrations but we were 21 entries short of reaching our goal of 100.  But worry not, twitter pals!  We are cooking up something extra special — something that will put a smile on lots of faces.  Details will be revealed in the coming months.  I hope you stay tuned.

Oh, and 1 more thing: if you’d like to submit your shop to be in one of our upcoming markets, click here.

We’ve reached 5,000 followers on twitter — and we did it the “old-fashioned” way of relying on friends to spread the word and following some interesting people.  How ’bout them apples!  (And we’re even prouder to say that we have no spammers in our counts.  We like to zap those babies!)

So now, we’d like to say thanks to our followers by offering a giveaway for a free I ♥ Handmade market registration.  One lucky winner will be selected at random to win their choice of either a Valentine, Wedding or Spring market registration.  Sound good?  Want to enter for your chance to win?  Here are the rules:

• Leave a comment on this post with your twitter ID so we know you’re one of our followers (Afterall, this prize is just for our twitter followers.) = 1 ENTRY
• Tweet about this post/giveaway on twitter (Just click the green retweet button below for an easy way to do this) = 1 ENTRY

You can enter up to two (2) times.  If you enter both ways, please leave a separate comment for each entry.

One lucky winner will be randomly selected and announced here on the blog and on twitter on Jan. 12th, 2010.  And for the non-competitive types: fear not!  You can go ahead and submit your shop today if you want to be in the market.

Good luck!

If not, click on over real quick!  It’s worth knowing about.  And definitely worth checking out for its uber fun web design, too!  Here’s a preview:

Described as a social shopping community, Storenvy offers a unique virtual marketplace experience. According to the site: “On one side, Storenvy is a series of online stores run by independent sellers…. On the other side, Storenvy is a network of shoppers who can shop across all of those stores at once, interacting with each other by watching what notes and ratings they leave on products and stores throughout the site. It’s like following your friends and style icons on a shopping spree, watching what they pick up and what they actually buy.”

Sounds intriguing, right? Well how about this: it’s FREE.

You can sell your merchandise on Storenvy free-of-charge.  (Free meaning that Storenvy does not charge you any listing or transaction fees.  The only fees you pay are to Paypal at point-of-sale, just like you would for any Paypal transaction on any site.)

So how do they make money?  Simple: a large portion of shops on Storenvy.com sell printed apparel and indie artists can have their products printed right through the site.

That’s it.  Pretty cut and dry.  Looks like lots of fun — and easy on the wallet for those who want to test it out.

Now, keep in mind that we’re not suggesting you close shop at your current online marketplace.  We just want you to be aware of your many options.

So go have a look-see and let us know what you think.