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I want to send a giant thank you to all of you who participated – giant thanks to you for decorating jars, voting, sharing and cheering each other on. I`m particularilly proud of how this community supports one another and saw plenty of `competitors`openly voting for other people`s jars and sharing encouragement. It`s been a particularly exciting year for us – from Mario Batali retweeting our message about Pimp That Preserve, to the staggering amount of entries and almost 1,500 votes, we were really blown away by your responses.
It`s time to divvy up the prizes and, while we`re excited to be naming some prize winners, we really all hope you had fun and enjoyed. You`re all winners in our eyes (I know I`m a cheeseball).
Without further delay, let`s start with the random prizes:
Prize 1 – We Sure Can (book) by Sarah B. Hood (includes a few recipes from us)
The winner of this is Marilla from Cupcake Rehab. She submitted her pimped up Champagne Jelly
Prize 2 – Autographed Copy of Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking
The winner of this is Kate (Snowflake Kitchen). Her branded jars got people talking (as did her glittery pickle on a jar of pickels as part of a seperate entry):
Laura Watt from Cubit`s Organic Living for her rockin`cider jars:
Grand Prize – Bragging Rites
Amy of the Lamm Farm wins for having the most votes on any photo – and we love the story that comes with these fabulous jars (she grew the lavendar that`s on the inside and outside of the jar). We`ve decided to donate an extra copy of our archival poster so Amy will walk away with a memory of her moment in the sun!
To see all the entries, flip through our FaceBook album (you don`t need an account to see them) – and thank you to everyone who joined in! We hope you`ll join in again next year!
We have really been blown away by the response to this years “Pimp That Preserve” – more than 1,000 votes were casted in the first 24 hours. If you haven’t had your say, pop on over to FaceBook (you have to have an account to vote but anyone can view the pictures) and click ‘LIKE’ on the ones you like the most. There’s some great inspiration for the Holidays and ideas on how to wrap your jars in many, many ways…
Voting ends Wednesday, December 21 at 8:00PM est. Winners will be announced Thursday.
I also have to say just how much I love seeing the sense of community – people are voting for each others pieces, sharing nice comments and celebrating the community passion for preserving.
We said at the start of this contest that we would name an honourary winner and that we would have a draw for the prizes (prizes being given to those who designed the jars). When we received the photos and posted them we shared that we had a dilemma - some people had sent many photos of the same product, some sent only one and some sent one that was a collage of a few pictures. I said we’d try to figure out the fairest way to declare a winner and distribute the prizes (if I submit 5 photos and you submit 1, I can vote for myself 5 times and you can only vote for yourself once). So here’s what we’ve decided:
We will judge different entries by the same person as different entries (i.e. not group them together just because they were made by the same person)
Most of the jars have at least two aspects to them – the jar and the lid.
Regardless of how many photos a nominee submitted we will:
Combine the total number of likes of their 2 most popular photos of the same preserve.
If there’s only 1 photo of said preserve, we will double the likes to even things out.
I’ve run the numbers a few times and believe this will be the fairest to account for the amount of amazing entires we received. If you have any concerns, send me an email (joel (a) elevenideas.ca).
We have just finished posting and labeling more than 60 pictures of entries for this years contest (if yours is somehow missing, which it shouldn’t be, send us an email – wearewellpreserved@elevenideas.ca and we’ll look into it as soon as we can)! There are some details for entrants at the very bottom of this post.
There are a tonne of great ideas and lots of inspiration for your holiday wrapping. Here’s what to do next:
Head over to the Facebook Group and go to the album for Pimp That Preserve 2011 (this should be accessible without Facebook) – just click here.
People worked long and hard on their creations – leave encouraging feedback on the ones you like and help them out by “Liking” the photos you like best (you’ll need to be logged into FaceBook for that)
If you can’t press “LIKE” on the photo, it’s because you need to LIKE WellPreserved first (sorry all, I have no option on this – we had intended to install a voting application that would avoid this but didn’t expect 60+ photos.
If those 60 ideas aren’t enough and you’ve missed our posts, here’s the entire series of ideas from this year and last year!
Step-by-step Instructions
Click here to go to our Facebook Page.
Press the LIKE button near the top of the screen beside our name (you may have to login to do this). This is a one-time thing that you can ‘unlike’ after if you don’t want to be in the community:
Go to the “Pimp That Preserve” Album (there’s a shortcut here), click on photos (you’ll see the word LIKE next to each one that you want to vote for (after clicking on them).
Details for Entrants
If you haven’t entered, you don’t have to read any further than this – but you’re welcome to.
Thank you for entering. Please make sure we haven’t missed you (we were up late filing and posting and accidents do happen).
The instructions above may help others who are struggling to like your photos – it’s important that you know that they have to like the photo in the album (liking it in a link that you share on your wall isn’t visible to us).
We’ll keep voting open until next week – exact date will be posted in the next few days as we see the activity. We’re hoping to create a bit of buzz around this and the amount of buzz will let us know the logical date to end. We will give you at least 48 hours of notice before ending it (I suspect it will be Monday night).
I have tried to link to everyone’s projects, blogs or websites. If I’ve missed your projects, feel free to link them. Not everyone has websites so I’ve also included first names assuming that would be ok.
Please check out and encourage others as well – you’re all rock stars to me.
We originally said we would draw based on the amount of votes you each had total. We didn’t expect multiple photos from individuals and when we received them we had to make a decision – do we post just one so that everyone has an equal chance or post them all. We’ve decided that, in the spirit of this event (which is to share ideas, inspiration and excitement) that we want to share your work in all it’s glory – meaning we’ve posted all the photos. For those will multiple photos of the same item, we will adjust the ballot numbers so that the same person voting multiple times on different pictures of the same thing won’t skew the results. Essentially we will do our best to make sure you can share all of your glory and make it the fairest we know how for everyone. If you’re concerned, send us an email (wearewellpreserved (at) elevenideas (dot) ca).
I hope we can have a lot of fun showcasing your work – the more we’re all able to have people come and peak at what you’re doing, the more people we’ll inspire – so well done on everyone!
Well here it is! our last one…no shortage of ideas this year..just a shortage of time to have fun doing them. Once you get going…it’s tough to stop…but preserves make great gifts all year! This one feels a bit summer-y.
Joel made Honey Ginger Cordial…we keep it in a big mason jar in the fridge, but I wanted to do ONE pimpin’ idea that didn’t involve a jar…
I found this vintage soda bottle in a local hand made furniture store (Kimberley Jackson does indeed make ‘beautiful’ things…I wish I could fit them in our apartment!). I picked up a bunch for these type of occasions…and they look really cute with flowers in them too.
The re:cap was found in a store on West Queen West (a pop-up shop called BYOB). A really cool local brewery seems to be distributing them (I did some googling)…Here’s where you can get them in Toronto. It’s a great idea, not that there’s ever beer left over in our house…but it works on these vintage bottles just fine!
Only a few more hours to get your own ideas over to us! Entries will go up tomorrow and let the voting begin!! can’t wait.
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Reminder: the deadline for entries is midnight December 12th (EST), after that we’ll post the entries in an album on our facebook page and let the <liking> begin. For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already or check out all of the posts from last year and this year here.
We made tonnes of pickled garlic for this years Slow Food Picnic at the Evergreen Brickworks. It was also our contribution to “We Sure Can” - Sarah B. Hood’s fantastic book (and one of the prizes!). We’ve been bringing it to dinner parties and dressing it up for the past few months so I wanted to do something a little different….
What else is garlic good for? Staving off Vampires! Or in the words of wikipedia – an effective apotropaic to ward-off revenants!
So with this post I’d like to inspire you to do 2 things:
1. think differently about your preserves, (we told the kids that pickled beens were ‘witch fingers’ when we made a guest appearance in October at Joshna Maharaj’s cooking class). Make them even more fun, or inspire different uses. Garlic has a long history of medicinal and health benefits, which is why it also came to be known to ward off all kinds of evil.
2. use what you know: do you love to take great pictures, sew, sculpt, fingerpaint, doodle, knit? find a way to use what you like to do to dress up your jars. I’m not a ‘natural’ crafty person, it takes me way longer to come up with those kinds of ideas (and execute them) than it does for me to do something like this. I love an excuse to design without many constraints or use my beloved press to do a linoblock print.
Maybe jar of “Vampire Begone ~ a guaranteed effective apotropaic to ward off revanants” and a copy of “We sure can” would make a great gift to inspire a new Preservationist in your life.
We’ve been getting loads of entries..and can’t wait to get the voting started next week! keep ‘em coming!
Reminder: the deadline for entries is midnight December 12th (EST), after that we’ll post the entries in an album on our facebook page and let the <liking> begin. For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already or check out all of the posts from last year and this year here.
If you read the blog regularly you’ll know that we do a BIG batch of tomato sauce every year with Joel’s parents. It’s a staple in our house and we don’t give it away much (we usually run out toward the end of the summer and Joel starts to get a bit stressed). So I had to give this one a little special treatment….
I gave the lid ring a shot of gold spraypaint to glam it up
The jar top is a small circle of leftover gold and black paper from the Japanese Paper Place (one of my favourite stores in Toronto!).
- the gold “2011″ sticker is from my trusty labeller (i love that thing), I recently found out that gold label tape is available and was quite excited about that. I just nicked little triangles in the end to make it look ‘ribbony’ (call me Martha®)
The label is a two color lino block relief print. I carved 2 separate blocks (one for each color), hand inked and printed by hand on recycled craft paper using my (favourite possesion) little (100lb steel) Showcard Press. Lino block printing is easy and fun, you don’t need a press (I just love an excuse to use mine). The supplies can be picked up at any art store (for pretty cheap) and loads of tutorials can be found on good 0l’ youtube.
Reminder: the deadline for entries is midnight December 12th (EST), after that we’ll post the entries in an album on our facebook page and let the <liking> begin. For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already or check out all of the posts from last year and this year here.
Giving your peaches will be a nice reminder of summer, that’s why I went bright and fun with this one.
again with the red spraypaint on the lid ring (hey, if you’re going to do one, might as well do a few and some of ours are getting a little over used so needed a facelift)
The stripes are just colorful paper tape I picked up at Rotblotts (another favourite store…got the spraypaint there too). They have ALL KINDS of colors, including some jarring (pun intended) fluorescents. I went with these because they felt a bit retro. It comes off really easily.
The gold foil letters are from the local office supply store
The lid liner is more paper tape stuck down to printer paper and trimmed out.
super easy.
Reminder: the deadline for entries is midnight December 12th (EST), after that we’ll post the entries in an album on our facebook page and let the <liking> begin. For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already – our all-time list of posts in this series more inspiration) is here.
We’re getting LOTS of entries…which is awesome. Truth be told I extended the deadline last year because we were short of entries until the last second! So we’re pretty excited by what we’ve seen so far and can’t wait to get the voting started over on the facebook page next week.
Reminder: the deadline for entries is midnight December 12th (EST), after that we’ll post the entries in an album on our facebook page and let the <liking> begin. For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already.
Like last year, we’ve been working on some ‘Pimpin’ of our own…and thought we’d share to show you how fun it is and perhaps inspire some more entries! I’m going to be posting a whole bunch leading up to the deadline. Here’s the first:
Hot Chili Peppers. It’s pretty simple…
I gave the lid ring a shot of glossy red spraypaint (after the food was cooled out of the hot water bath)
The little tags are from an office supply store and are fed onto some divinetwine that’s wrapped a few times around the jar
The lid liner is just a scrap of thick white paper that i doodled on with a red marker.
The spraypainting was the hardest (and grossest) part, you could probably use model paint as well. My main objective is to not damage the jars so they’re reusable for preserving in the future…so playing around with the lid ring is okay.
For all the details check out this post if you haven’t already or check out all of the posts from last year and this year here.
***I’m working on a post to announce the winner…but if you want a preview…head on over to our Facebook page! (it’s in the photos)***
We received so many great ideas for Pimpin’ Preserves, I think a lot of people are going to be happy to get some stylish looking edible gifts this Holiday season…so without further ado…Here are the entries! Have a look through and make sure to cast your vote at the bottom…the winner will be announced Friday December 17th and contacted via email so we can get the details and send them their prize….“Canning and Preserving with Ashley English”.
**Late entry!! UPDATE** My email seems to have a hate-on for gmail lately, and I didn’t notice that this lovely entry was sent in on time from Kelly at Eat Local London….. but landed in my junk mail (insert sad emoticon). So we have a number 11 (my personal and favourite lucky number)….so let’s help her catch up on the votes! Kelly Snagged this great ribbon at Michaels and the paper is Amy Butler (love!) Such a pretty idea, definitely approprate for a birthday gift as well or even wedding favours! So scoot down to the bottom to the voting panel and submit your vote now…send it along to friends who might like some ideas as well.
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This one is from Andrea…excellent use of crochet in jar pimpin’, and the green apple jelly has such a beautiful color (and sounds delicious).
Heather and Colette used dried roses to tart up their port pear compote…I feel like a cup of tea and some scones served on one of those fancy silver trays in the background.
Rachelle adds allspice to her pickled yellow beans (we’re going to have to try that), she pimped up this great gift with a real acorn and and some leaf charms from a broken piece of jewellry….she told me it reminds her of fall and the last harvest of the garden…I agree (nice touch with the old crate in the background).
Tamir titled his entry ‘Busker Applesauce’…this is so much fun, the apple sauce is cozy and warm…and is clearly very talented. (I’m a big fan of the Ork poster used in the background – have to get one for my studio)
Stephanie sent us her “Flamenco Salsa” and her “tongue is burning fiercely”…love it!
The Boyd Sisters sent us some neato pimped out pickled eggs…this one cracks me up (yeah, couldn’t resist!) Ridiculously cute! Go check out their blog The Harvest Kitchen Sisters….we’re well aquainted with the ‘country sister’…we’ve been enjoying our vegetables from Kawartha Ecological Growers thanks to her and her local food guru husband!
Kaela from Local Kitchen did so many I had trouble choosing just 3…you can see everything she did on her blog Including a recipe on designing your own label…..I chose the 9 chili salsa because I love the radio active label and the dried chilli from her own CSA
I loved this one because she sourced this prettiness from her own back yard (and i’m envious…if i did that i’d have to use an old coffee cup and a discarded chip bag…boo)
Kaela dressed up her spicy garlic cucumber pickles for Hanukkah with some spare buttons and some beautiful bits of ribbon…super clean looking.
Number 9 comes from our friend Diana at Flohaus, she made this ‘preserve cozy’ out of bits of old sweaters (probably left over from her AWESOME contribution to the Chair Affair). There’s a little window in the top so you don’t miss the label (one of our business cards!) and it unzips to reveal the preserve…zuccini relish that inspired the colors of the cozy. I wish I was better at sewing! Diana has put up a post with instructions….
and finally (a nice even number) 10 is from Laura at Cubitts Organics (where you can order rare and heirloom seeds for your garden!). She had a great idea to repurpose old holiday cards (you could get tonnes of vintage ones on ebay)…i love the snowflake punch idea…it would show the gold or silver jar lid underneath.
Well that was fun! Now it’s time to vote:
If you missed our ìnspiration`posts, click here to see a list of all the posts in this series (and even more ideas on wrapping your jars). We`d also love to get lots of comments to share with the brave souls who joined in on the fun – love them all..
I’m in the process of going through all the entries and setting up the post for voting! Lots of fantastic contributions. I thought I’d post one last inspiration piece….from my mom. I was visiting my parents while Joel was in Scotland, and spent time up there pimpin’ some preserves and mom wanted in on the action. I gave her the big jar of tomato sauce and an ‘award’ that I picked up at Value Village for inspiration…and she decided to dress it for the oscars! So here’s her red carpet ready couture gown fit for tomato sauce – a little shiny fabric, some faux silk and some glittery jewels…voila!
