International Beading Week just wouldn’t be the same without a competition or two! So, I’m announcing my own Bead Inspirations Beading Competition.
What’s it all about…?
How would you like to win £50…?
…of beading goodies that you get to choose? Well I’ve decided to give not just one but TWO lucky people this prize.
So, my two winners will each receive £50 of loyalty points that they can use on any of the products from the Bead Flowers website, throughout the next year. That means you don’t have to use them all at once. You’re not just restricted to patterns, or beads – you can mix and match!
How does that sound?
How do you enter the Bead Inspirations Beading Competition?
Well, you can hot-foot it over to this page, read all the rules and enter any time from now until 4th August. Or, you can take things a little more slowly and find out why I’m running this competition…
The inspiration behind the Bead Inspirations beading competition
For me, beading is about the act of beading, obviously. But it’s also about being creative and free. This is something we all do naturally as children. But as we grow up, sadly, this tends to get squashed out of us.
Children take everything at face value without really judging it. But with age, comes experience, and with experience comes judgment. Things are no longer just there, they acquire a value. This might be good or it might be bad. But the thing is, when we create, we put something out into the world and we know it’s going to be judged. So, that’s a pretty scary thing to do.
In fact, it’s so scary that a lot of people stop creating. I don’t mean they stop making things, but they become too scared to put their own mark on those things.
So, if IBW is all about celebrating beading, for me, a massive part of that is about celebrating creativity. If I’m calling upon people to bead, then I also want to call upon them to create.
Taking away some of the fear
Having just explained all that, it seems perhaps counter-intuitive to ask people to enter a competition and actually invite judgment. Well, a lot of people really like competing. So, fair enough – just remember, it’s not a judgment on you as a person. Maybe not even a judgment on your beading or design abilities.
Competitions are always subjective.
So, I decided to also give a secret prize to every single person who is brave enough to enter. I wanted to acknowledge that you really are a winner for just putting yourself out there!
Starting you on the right track
I’ve also called this the Bead Inspirations beading competition because I’m inviting you to take inspiration from a pattern I’m giving you for free. (Click this link to claim your free pattern)
The other scary thing about creating is coming up with an idea. So, for this competition, I wanted to start people out with something. Then, all you have to do is let it evolve in some way. Take inspiration from a set starting point.
Now, that’s a whole lot less scary than dreaming something up from scratch.
So, I really hope lots of people will be brave enough to enter this. If they don’t, I’m going to look pretty silly myself…talking of fear and judgments!
Hi Katie: Just so I do it right, can we vote for all the beadwork we like, vote as many times as we want, or is our vote monitored so that we can only vote one time? I’m asking as I don’t want to vote too early if we only have one vote in the contest…I want to save my vote in that case until all the entries are up and ready to be ‘drooled’ over! :>)
(If someone has already asked this question, sorry for the repeat but I can’t see the previous posts here until I write a comment.)
You can vote for multiple entries (eg 3 of the 20 entries), but only one vote per entry will count.