The 70 winners of our 7th anniversary giveaway were recently announced.  Congratulations to Cristina, Howard, Wayne and the other 67 lucky winners.

Cristina Perez (Graphic Designer)

Cristina Perez is the principal owner of 3rd Person Media, a Southern California-based graphics and design firm specializing in web design and event signage.  A recent project posted on Elance not only helped a client recover from a complete loss of website files – it also made Cristina one of the Elance giveaway winners.

Cristina is relatively new to Elance, but has already worked with two Elancers and plans to use her giveaway money to fund her next Elance project. 

Russell Howard (Web Developer and Marketer)
Having completed close to fifty projects on Elance, Russell Howard has become adept at working with Elancers on a wide range of web development and graphic design work for his clients in the UK as well as his own personal projects.

Russell now lives in Southern Spain where he caters to clients in the UK while enjoying the sunny weather and the open mountain roads of Andalusia.  He has also turned one of his passions into a new business, and is offering adventure tours on motorcycles and dune buggies through the Spanish countryside.  The websites for these tours, http://www.corporateadventure.es and www.RideHeaven.com, were made possible by Elancer Softvention.

Wayne Fenstermacher (Owner, eBay Trading Assistant Firm)
Wayne created TheFamilyBiz.com, an eBay trading assistant firm, with the help of several Elance providers to help individuals, retailers, and manufacturers sell items on eBay.  "We wanted a site with a personality," says Wayne, "so we created family members - complete with caricatures - with unique personalities and quirks.  Our customers love keeping up with what our online family is up to."

Recently, Wayne decided to digitally manipulate a photograph of the family cats so the cats' eyes remained in color while the rest of the photo was converted to black and white.

He posted the winning project and awarded it to Sapphire Designs (Elance username: jennj28) less than an hour later.  The next day he received the finished product.

"Elance is an integral part of the way we do business," says Wayne. "I don't even look in the Yellow Pages anymore, because with Elance I have a huge pool of people to draw from – and on my schedule.  So it's only natural we use Elance for personal reasons, too."

Laurie Williams of Trumpet Marketing Group (Elance username: LWTrumpet) developed the website, and Jennifer Kirkland (Elance username: KirklandCopyediting) and Katherine Canning (Elance username: KateyC) wrote articles and blog entries.