Announcing a new, ongoing contest at Rings & Things!
Enter often! Monthly winners~!
Some of you have been curious to know more about the inner workings of R&T’s yearly contest, so our Melissa kindly provides a glimpse…
Contest Judging Is Under Way
We always love to watch the entries roll in for our annual Your Designs Rock! Contest, and this year has been no different! We enjoy seeing familiar names, and we’re equally excited to have a large number of first-time contestants this year. New contestants will be entered into a drawing for a free goodie bag (winner announced the first week of June). We’re also excited to see entries from across the US (Florida to California, Texas to New Hampshire), and from Canada, Australia, Sweden, Singapore, Norway, Spain, India and Russia — a nice reminder of how far from humble Spokane, WA, Rings & Things’ circle of friends extends.
While the deadline to enter this year’s contest has passed, the work is far from over. This year’s winners will be chosen by six judges, all busy at work scoring a huge variety of creations. Our judges are all active in the arts-&-crafts community. They are required to have experience with both jewelry-making and with submitting their creations to competitive juries. So, for those of you contestants anxiously awaiting results, our judges can sympathize!
The judges individually score designs for each of the three advertised criteria: originality of design, quality of craftsmanship and overall aesthetics. Scores remain secret, so please do not waste time calling to inquire — we just find that things work better that way. In the end, the combined score is what counts! In other words, winners will be strong in all three criteria. Once tallies are complete, the judges meet to confirm the winners. After that, a flurry of work begins to create gift certificates, prepare announcements, and display winning entries in our online Design Gallery.
Winners will be announced the first week of June. We know it’s a long wait, but good things often take time! 🙂 Thanks to all of our 2010 contestants for another great year of exciting designs. Best of luck to you all!
You know, R&T’s bead truck is making a springtime visit to your town. An easy contest helps you get the most out of our bead shows 🙂 …
√ Attend our BeadTour show in your town. Enjoy R&T’s exclusive bead deals!
√ Talk about it online:
• Facebook it
• Blog it
• Twitter it
√ When I see your report of our show, I’ll put your name in the hat.
At the end of our spring bead-show run, we’ll draw several winners to receive these coveted R&T BeadTour t-shirts!
(Giveaway drawing: July 1st, 2010.)
Which show are you going to? Here’s the spring BeadTour list:
03/12: Houston, TX
03/13: San Antonio, TX
03/14: Austin, TX
03/16: Dallas, TX
03/17: Oklahoma City, OK
03/19: St. Louis, MO
03/20: Kansas City, KS
03/21: Des Moines, IA
03/22: Omaha, NE
03/24: Denver, CO
03/26: Salt Lake City, UT
03/28: Boise, ID
04/03: Missoula, MT
04/10: Bellevue, WA
04/11: Portland, OR
04/17: Seattle, WA
04/18: Mt. Vernon, WA
04/25: Minneapolis, MN
04/27: Green Bay, WI
04/28: Milwaukee, WI
04/29: Chicago, IL
05/01: Grand Rapids, MI
05/02: Detroit, MI
05/04: Louisville, KY
05/12: Sacramento, CA
05/13: San Mateo, CA
05/15: Orange County, CA
05/16: San Bernardino, CA
05/18: Phoenix, AZ
05/20: Albuquerque, NM
06/06: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
06/08: Tampa, FL
06/09: Orlando, FL
06/10: Jacksonville, FL
06/10-13: Milwaukee, WI – Bead&Button
06/12: Atlanta, GA
06/13: Charlotte, NC
06/14: Raleigh, NC
06/15: Richmond, VA
06/16: McLean, VA
06/17: Baltimore, MD
06/19: Philadelphia, PA
06/20: East Hanover (NYC area), NJ
06/21: New Haven, CT
06/22: Boston (Dedham), MA
06/24: Rochester, NY
While R&T’s online store is down for a bit, getting upgraded today, I’m making us useful…Let’s have a giveaway!
Thanks to Making Jewellery magazine out of the UK, for sending me a beautiful promo copy of their new March 2010 issue. Inside the plastic wrap it includes an 86-piece jewelry kit. All of this can be yours in today’s drawing. Just Tweet/FB/comment below with your favorite crafts tip!
Here are the entries, live-blogged (need I point out, you should follow these Tweeters & Facebookers):
See the comments below for more tips, and our winner!
The blogs say there’s a contest going on. Must be true!
That’d be this year’s R&T design contest, of course.
Have you gotten your entry ready? You’ve got until the end of this month!
How do I know all this? I read the blogs 🙂
Maneki says,
“Rings & Things tar emot bidrag till tidigare omnämnda tävlingen Your Designs Rock t o m 28 februari. Imorgon, 5 februari, är sista dagen att lämna in om du vill vara med i deras Early bird-drawing med chans att vinna goodiebags. Observera att de numer inte längre skjuter fram sista inlämningsdatum utan siste februari stÃ¥r fast.”
Not to be outdone, Tammy Powley at About.com notes,
“Rings & Things’ Your Designs Rock competition is taking entries, and the deadline is coming up at the end of the month.”
And as if to prove her right, Adalea’s Designs has shared a super-fun necklace design that’s going to be entered in this year’s contest.
Join the blogroll! Send your entry! Blog about it!
Introducing our newest winner in the “Guest Blog Partner” drawing, Melan Designs!
Every 3 months, with the help of random.org, we pick someone to be R&T’s guest blog partner. The twist this time around is that the winner isn’t strictly a blogger!
Melan Designs is an active Facebook user instead. We’re delighted to have her (Melanie) expanding the blog-partner program further into social mediaspace.
Click in to check out Melanie’s metalwork, jewelry and jokes. (“Temper, temper, temper,” said the metalsmith…)
And wish her well in this new partnership!
* Put your name in for the drawing too! Did you know–we’ll keep your name “in the hat” till it gets drawn? That way you don’t have to keep re-entering 🙂
Our colleague Rita submitted a design to the Soft Flex Trios beading contest, and it has been nominated as a possible winner.
It’s voting season, so why not vote for the design: “Mystical Trios: Magical Butterfly Necklace”, by Rita Hutchinson?
Thanks a GR!
(Bead-supplier talk, for “thanks a million”!) 🙂
Introducing you to the lucky winner of our latest drawing…
Welcome Wendy Gibson, “guest” blog partner!
Wendy put her name in at our Blog Partners page, to be in our quarterly drawing. She’s now our second (ever) winner in that ongoing contest!
5 things you didn’t know about Wendy, and why she’s going to rock your world for the next 3 months:
Enjoy reading Wendy’s Craft Dinner blog, and say hi to her at her other links above!
Rings & Things’ own Metalman, Kurt Madison, took some time before our big design contest to talk about what makes a winning entry…
I have been reflecting on what wins an award in a contest. Is it the biggest / most elaborate entry? The one with the most obvious $$ spent?
Lots of times, it does seem to look that way. When you feel like it works that way, try looking at several years of winners for that contest. There may be a unconscious bias working there somewhere. I feel I have seen some cultural bias in international art exhibitions — this happens and you can’t really complain about it. You can become aware of it and use it to your advantage, or at least know that it’s working against you.
So anyway….what makes a winner? I think it’s always design. The work has to have good design.
How to get to good design? Well, I guess my method is to collect ideas for a while, then I do small sketches (thumbnails) and play with my elements (beads/stones/etc.), until I start to get a real idea or concept in my mind’s eye.
Then I do some larger drawing. I really like an expressive/abstract style of drawing — this gives me more ideas. After that: I do a final design drawing to life-size, and really tight so I can cut metal to fit and all. Many times I get halfway through and the materials or visual ideas shift. That may mean a new piece gets started, or that the current one gets benched for a while, or just improvements.
So in this description, how many pieces got designed? Maybe 10 various directions — and from them, picking the best one and making builds for that GOOD DESIGN WINNER.
Rings & Things would like to introduce someone to you…
Angela Bannatyne is the very first winner ever in our ongoing “I Want to be a Blog Partner!” contest. She’s already written her first blog post about it. Go have a read!
Every three months, we draw a name to be a guest Blog Partner. We’ll send goodie packs of R&T items for review, for use in jewelry-making, or to give away–your choice. It’s a great chance to check out some of the latest and the greatest in the realm of beads & findings!
The next drawing is at the end of October. If you put your name in at our Blog Partners program page, we’ll keep it “in the hat” till it gets drawn. So you don’t have to keep re-entering!
Best of luck!