After school snacks

For the contest about "after school snacks," I went with the classic cracker trio - you know, that assortment that has a butterfly shape, a bowtie shape, and a rectangle. I put the crackers on top of some classic handwriting practice paper (a design I recreated so I could make this one).



This one REALLY bombed - it only got four votes and came in DEAD LAST. Wow! This was a little surprising considering that seven people "liked" it during the voting - and every other time I've seen, a lot more people vote for a design than "like" it. Just one of life's mysteries, I suppose.

My favorites were the very stylized fruit and nuts and strawberry fruit snacks.

Still below average

Continuing from yesterday's roundup of poorly-performing contest entries, we now move on to the ones that came in closer to the middle.

For the hiking theme, there was a restricted palette with these six colors:


Color by COLOURlovers
Color by COLOURlovers







Plus white.  I did an overhead trail map, though I think my trails are a little too dense.




This got 47 votes and edged into the top two-thirds. My favorite was the graphic compasses (though I'd like it better at a smaller scale).

For the backpacks contest, I re-used the colors from my school papers and the cute cats from the Olympic events and created Kitten School:



This got 61 votes and crept a little closer to the median line. My favorite entries were these about camping and travel.

Next theme: farming. I was inspired by terrace farming.



This only got 45 votes, but since this contest had many more entries than the previous two here, it placed a little higher, relatively speaking. (Generally, the more entries in a contest, the fewer votes any individual design gets.) On the understated side, I liked the sketchy textured fields, and for the more kid-centric, exuberant type of farm, I liked this one. And I liked the chickens and lemons.

Get some sleep, it's a school night

After the last roundup of mediocre-performing contest entries, now I have two to summarize that did a little better. First, the theme was "bedtime," with these colors:

Color by COLOURlovers

I was inspired by a "lovely rooms' tumblr, and made an orderly jumble of inviting turned-down beds. The lines are colored with a gradient of the two shades of blue. The background pattern is a smaller version of the lavender I made for Maren's collection. - thinking about being tucked into bed makes me think of my mother's lavender-scented lotion. The sheets and bedspreads are also filled in with existing patterns created for previous designs: shells, grass tufts, dots, knit, lattice, and bricks.



This came in 48 out of 254, with 109 votes - the highest percentile placement I've had since my blue jeans entry! My favorite entry had a similar dormitory feel, but a much cuter style. I was also not the only person to think of lavender.

Next, a design for "science fair." Two of my own science fair experiments I remember the most involved growing radish sprouts in different colors of light and with different watering liquids. So I thought of framing radish sprouts with rays of light or streams of liquid, and abstracted it from there. I re-used all the patterns mentioned above, plus others in the paper patchwork, my omnipresent eucalyptus, speckles, and stars.



This came in 67 out of 157, with 98 votes. I also uploaded a version with just the background diamonds, and no sprouts, in case anyone wants it. This contest didn't produce many designs that had standalone appeal, to my eye, but my favorites were the lunar cycle and glassware.