With International Beading Week over for another year, I hope you can reflect back and review all the fun. Certainly, I’ve loved seeing the beaded boxes coming to life and enjoying the competition entries. Which brings me neatly to my last task for this year’s week…announcing the IBW beading Competition Results.
If you remember, I invited people to take inspiration from my beaded needle case design, to create something of their own. I then had two prizes on offer: one for a public vote and one for my personal choice. You can still see all the wonderful entries here.
Before I announce the results, I want to say a really heartfelt congratulations to everyone who entered. It’s easy to sit on the outside and look in. But if you have ever entered any kind of competition in the past, you will know, there’s a lot of emotion that goes with it.
If you’re anything like me, you may have been looking at other entries and criticising your own efforts too harshly. But I would like to really emphasise to everyone who took part, you need to feel proud of your achievements. I saw thought and creativity in every single piece. And I’ve found it really hard to pick my personal favourite. So, genuinely, well done to each of you. If this has been your first experience of a competition, then I hope you will be encouraged to do more in future.
With sadness…
Now, I’m going to keep you in suspense just a few more minutes. I have to also say a few words about the public vote. In setting up this competition, I was also trying something new: some new software. It has been great in many ways, but far from perfect.
One of the biggest issues was that it allowed people to vote multiple times. I did make that clear in the voting instructions and request that you were honest and resisted the temptation to abuse the flaws in the system.
I am really, really sad to say that this request was ignored by a lot of people.
If you were voting in the IBW beading competition, what you probably didn’t realise was that the back end of the system (which I see) records the identity of the person voting. So yes, I could plainly see when people had voted over and over. In one instance, I was also able to see that the person abusing the system in this way was the person who had entered the competition (recording several hundred votes for their own piece). To my mind, this was blatant cheating. This may have been the case in other instances too. I’m not going to name and shame here – I leave that to your consciences.
What to do…?
So, I started to go through and remove the duplicate votes. After spending a couple of hours on this tedious process, I thought, ‘why am I doing this?’ Why waste my precious time when the voters and/or competitors have not behaved honourably in this? At the end of the day, the winner is going to receive free goods from me, so do I want to reward a cheat? No.
So, I decided to just disqualify all the entries where this large-scale blatant abuse had occurred. You may or may not agree with my decision, but I will not enter into debate about it. The results below are final.
Announcing the IBW Beading Competition winners
After that, let me return to a high and let us all remember that IBW is supposed to be about a celebration of beadwork.
So, the winner of the public vote (that is the entry who gained the most votes without cheating) is Faye Williams. I am really pleased that so many people enjoyed her PWAT necklace (photo above). I felt it showed a beautiful link with the original inspiration, but took it in a new direction and showed skill in altering the design to fit a different Peyote technique. So, well done Faye!
Now, choosing my own favourite was really a very difficult task. But, in the end, I selected Dora’s name tags (see below). All the designs showed a lot of creativity and skill. But I loved the motivation behind these and the way in which they fitted the idea of IBW. For me, they suggested a means of reaching out, making new friends and celebrating beads…all the things that IBW aims to achieve.
So, very well done to both ladies. I have contacted you via email to arrange your prizes and I hope you enjoy them.
Both are beautiful, but sad that you had to disqualify some votes. Rules are rules.
Congratulations to the winners! I tried to vote for Dora’s beady person nametag but I don’t think I did. I couldn’t figure out if I was voting or not. I think all the entries were good. And, I love my beaded box for IBW. Thank you, Katie Dean.
What a shame that this happened. I admit I did vote twice but at very different times and for different pieces. You did the right thing in disqualifying the culprit, cheating should never be rewarded. The winning pieces are both lovely.
I completely agree with your decision to delete those entries. Sadly they actually disqualified themselves. Both winning entries are so beautiful! I love the way the necklace spirals around & the little beaded girl is adorable! Great work, applause, applause to both!
Well I must say I was sort of shocked when reading this. I apologize to you Katie! I didn’t think any one here would do such a thing! Then I did some diggin and I must say it didn’t take much effort on my part to discover that my Husband and my Mother (of all people) both were hitting the daylights out of that little star button! We all share everything; phone, Apple, amazon and kindle accounts just to name a few. I totally admit to showing them the post on my iPad and shamelessing begging for their votes as well as those of their friends. Part of me is really upset with them but the other part can’t get over the looks they had when admitting it and saying that they were sorry and were only trying to help! I hope others who have an apology to make here will have the wherewithall to come forward and admit they were wrong and apologize to Katie for mucking about in her contest!
I have absolute respect to you for writing this! And it did occur to me that in a lot of cases, it might well be well-meaning friends and relatives who thought they were helping. So, thank you, sincerely, for the apology and explanation. From my point of view, I was just sad that I felt I needed to take that action. I know the system was wide open to abuse – I even pointed it out – but I did request that people exercise some self control and not abuse it just because they could. The silver lining is that it’s lovely for you (any anyone else) to know you have family and friends who have your back and want to help you 🙂
Thanx Katie, I have the utmost respect for you too and I look forward to continuing our Beading relationship! You are without a doubt one of my absolute favorite Beading teachers!