Has Daddy's Little Girl Got It?

I’ve been toying with the thought of trying my luck in the SAS Designer contest. Now, my ego is not telling me that I’m as good as the ladies I work for on their CTs! I was using Darlene’s products when I first stared Digital Scrapbooking and I was in love with Sherrie’s work the first time I saw it and downloaded her “Bountiful Harvest” kit last fall. But I do know that working with their kits and Beckie Wallace’s kits as a guest CT member in June, I’ve learned a lot about designing.

In the spring I tried my hand at digi-scrap designing and it was fun! I’m proud to say that there have been over 500 downloads of “Train, Train” and I’ve enjoyed seeing a few layouts using my kits. It’s very gratifying. It’s also a lot of creative fun. I think my layouts get better and better as I progress in my hobby, again thanks to the wonderful designers I work for, but I also come up with new ideas for my layouts while trying to come up with new design ideas. They work well together!

So now I’m thinking I may just try the SAS designer contest. Darlene was incredibly helpful in answering my questions about what would be expected of me if I do manage to make it all the way and have a store. She was very honest about the balance of what I’d be required to give and what I’d get in return. I think the obligation is something I could handle. I don’t really expect to win, but I wouldn’t enter if I wasn’t going to honestly try and I wanted to be sure I could meet the obligation before I gave it serious consideration.

Even if I enter and don’t win, I’m not in bad company. Sherrie’s first go at designing professionally was in the same contest last year. She went far in the contest but didn’t win. Now she’s an exclusive designer at the shop that was way up there on her list of places she’d like to sell. You learn a lot about deadlines and requirements. The contest also gives you an opportunity to get critiques from other designers, opens your work up to a larger audience and of course, that gives analyst junkie me and opportunity to see what appeals to people and what doesn’t!

All this contest stuff brings me to today’s freebie!

I checked out the first round requirements from last year’s contest. There was a swatch, and a requirement for 6-12 papers and 6-10 embellishments. Recolored items count as one embellishment, same with recolored papers of the same design. The rules for this year tell me that the assignment for each level to the contest is given at 9 am on Thursday and the entry must be posted by 6 PM the following Monday. As part of a hobby I share with a lot of stay at home Moms, I have a bit of a disadvantage there. The career potential isn’t lucrative enough to “quit my day job.” or quit looking for my day job! So the big question for me is “What kind of quality can I produce within that small a window of time??” I worked on “Train, Train” for a couple weeks! Then again, I did “Printemps Classique” in one industrious weekend.

So today was my test run. I made myself a swatch and started working at 3:30 PM. I finished the preview and upload to 4 Shared at 12:30 AM, taking a break for dinner. (David cooked!) A good chunk of the contest is votes from members at Stone Accents Studio. I’ll ask everyone who downloads to leave me a comment here and tell me what you think. Should I give it a try? Do YOU think my work with an exact deadline in mind is worthy of putting in the competition?

And there will still be Digitalegacies freebies here! That’s not going to change! Take a look at some of the designers’ blogs I have links to, the best freebies seem to come from the creative buzz of doing it all the time!

So without more prattle, here is my practice kit, or qualifier. “Daddy’s Little Girl” was inspired by the heritage project I’ve been working on. Lots of pages of Pop and me and some of my brother and his girls. It’s big on the pinks and purples Rina and Tori were identified with when they were babies and the yellow that represents the sunshine little girls bring into a Daddy’s heart!

sorry, this link is expired

Mug Shot will be here Monday evening
Sample layout with “Daddy’s Little Girl,” probably Tuesday at lunch.