As those of you who were reading the blog last year may remember, I hate to do this so early, but it's time to announce our Christmas-related competition!  (otherwise you won't have time to use the fabric.)

This year's theme is Decorations.  Have you seen this month's Mollie Makes?  One of the free papers inside has a decorations design. (See above)  They must have known!

You can either emulate the magazine and design a fabric pattern based on Christmas decorations.  Or you can design a cut-and-sew decoration (or 2).  

If you go for the fabric design, the rules are pretty much as usual.  The designs will be displayed at the fat quarter size, but the prize will be 1 metre of fabric and a voucher for £40.

If you go for the cut-and-sew option, you can design 1 or more decorations to fit either a swatch (20cms x 20cms) or a fat quarter (56cms x 50cms).  Please tell me which it is when you email.  Cutting and sewing lines should be marked as necessary, and instructions provided.  The prize will be approx. 1 metre of fabric (but narrower than usual - equivalent to 4 fat quarters, so that you get whole designs.) and a voucher for £40.

This month's competition will be judged by a guest judge.

OUR GUEST JUDGE

Our guest judge for this month's competition is Christine Leech.

Christine has worked as a designer and art director on magazines and is creative director of Marie Claire’s biannual fashion magazine Runway.  She has written a number of craft books, including 'Little Sew & Sew', which we gave away as our first ever Giveaway prize.  I made a peg bag based on Christine's peg bag in Little Sew & Sew early last year.  Her latest book is called 'Fresh Prints', with lots of ideas for printing things around the home.  Christine also writes a blog - Sew Yeah - which includes lots of crafty ideas.  There are always a few ideas for things to make around holidays and festivals, so she's a perfect choice to judge our Christmas decorations competition.

FULL COMPETITION RULES AND DETAILS:

Please upload your competition designs to your account on our website.  If you haven’t already got an account, it’s simple to set up.  You just need an email address, password and name, which can be your own name, a nickname or a business name.  (You will be prompted to log in or create an account when you try to save your design.)  Then email me at admin@printmepretty.co.uk, to tell me the name of your account and design.  (So I can find the right one!)  I will then put them onto Facebook for voting.  The winning design (and possibly one or two others) will be put into our competition winners slot.  In case you're wondering about the order in which designs are listed on Facebook, the first to arrive in my inbox goes at the top, with the rest listed in the order in which they are sent in.

 So, the competition is:  Create a design suitable for printing on fabric based on 'Decorations' or design a cut and sew decoration.

Technical matters:

Your design should be at a resolution of at least 150 dpi, but not more than 300, using RGB colour space.

When it comes to printing, the repeat options are:  Straight, Centre, Half-drop, Half-brick and Mirror.  Once you’ve uploaded your design to our website, you can play around with the repeats to see which one will look best.  For pictures of what the different repeats look like, check this blog post.

To enter:

Upload your design onto our website by Tuesday, October 13th, giving it a title.  Email me at admin@printmepretty.co.uk, telling me the title of your design and the name of your account.

The closing date for receiving designs is midnight on Tuesday, September 13th, after which designs will be displayed (at the fat quarter or swatch size, as appropriate) on Facebook . There will be no voting this month. The winning design, as chosen by our guest judge, will win 1 metre of 100% cotton fabric, printed with your design and a voucher for £40.    Designs will also, as always, be displayed on the blog.  The winning design will be available for sale on our web site for at least 1 week after the close of voting.  

 The official bit:

By entering, you agree to our competition terms and conditions.

You may only submit one entry, which must be your own work and based on the theme Decorations. ‘Your own work’ means any form of original art work, photography, etc which you have produced. Your design should not have been entered in one of our previous competitions.

All entries will be displayed, unless we feel that the subject matter is inappropriate.  Copyright will remain with you, but by entering the competition, you give us the right to use your design in any way we wish on our web site and social media, for advertising purposes.

The winning design will feature on our web site and will be available for sale for a week after we announce the winner.  After that time, the designer may leave the design for sale, or remove it from public view.  The designer will be paid £2 per metre commission on any sales of the design.

Happy designing!

From Kiwi at Heart