10 inside secrets to bringing home the blue ribbon every time!

10 inside secrets to entering your plastic canvas projects in local, county and state crafts competitions, and bringing home the blue ribbon every time! Would you like to enter your plastic canvas crafts projects into local, county and state crafts competitions, and win ribbons, awards and even cash prizes?

Listen, if I can do it, you can do it too! Over the last 13 years I've entered my projects into dozens of competitions and have won literally hundreds of ribbons and awards. I've had my picture taken with my projects for the local newspapers. And I've received quite a few cash awards, to boot! Now sometimes the money is not that great, because crafts competitions are very inexpensive to enter, so the cash prizes aren't always very big. But the thrill of winning out over your competition is very real (especially when they are as talented as you). And when you bring home the blue ribbon it is truly a kick you'll always remember.

Over the years I've mastered the art and science of bringing home the blue ribbon every single time. I can't think of the last time I've entered my projects, and failed to win at least one blue ribbon, if not the big kahunas of ribbons, Best of Show, Best of Class, Best of Division and Best of Theme. So here are seven of my most closely guarded secrets for entering your plastic canvas crafts projects into local, county and state crafts competitions, and bringing home the blue ribbon every time… Secret #1: Think thematically! If there is any way to capitalize on a theme related directly or indirectly to the crafts competition, do so! The judges absolutely love it when you tie-in a theme to your project. For example, many county fairs have major crafts competitions.

Some of these fairs get underway around the Fourth of July. Others are earlier, or later, in the year. But they are almost always centered around holidays (think Mother's day, Father's day, Flag day) or long weekends (think Fourth of July, President's day, Labor day, Memorial day). You can capitalize on these holiday themes to create related plastic canvas projects. If there is not a holiday during the fair, you can rest assured the fair itself will have a theme.

Fair themes usually change every year, so you'll have to do some checking and find out what the theme of your local, county fair is each year. The fair theme can usually be found in the advertising for the fair, or on its web site if it has one. Fair themes are decided months in advance, so you can even call the fair long before the advertising has come out, and simply ask, "What is your fair theme this year?" They'll be happy to tell you.

The bottom line is that you'll either want to take the season into account and use that as the theme for at least one of your entries, or take the fair theme into account, and plan your entry around it. Let's say your local county fair is held over the weeks surrounding the Fourth of July holiday season. And you have decided to create a plastic canvas vase. But instead of the usual household colors you wanted to do something with a Fourth of July patriotic color theme. So you decide to create a red and blue vase with white stars around it. Great idea! The judges absolutely love thematic projects like that. Or let's say the fair theme is "Get your kicks at the county fair!" and their logo is a donkey with a big smile on its face, and it is kicking its hind legs high into the air.

If you can find a plastic canvas pattern with a kicking donkey on it, you're in business. Even better if you are creative enough to create a kicking donkey pattern of your own -- you'll probably blow the competition away! Or what if the fair theme is "Come enjoy an old-fashioned good time!" Can you find some patterns that fit that "old fashioned" theme? Of course you can. There are hundreds of them. Perhaps you could find a pattern of an old-fashioned Model T car. Then use your creativity to make a small plastic canvas box to display the car on top of. Then use colored thread to "print" the fair theme down the side of the box. The judges will eat it up, I promise you!

Be sure to carefully read the Competition Handbook from your local county fair, or from whatever organization is sponsoring the crafts competition in your area, to determine their rules for entering a project into the "theme" category. In some competitions, "theme" might be a separate category or class by itself. In others, you might be able to enter a thematic item into multiple classes, such as Tissue Boxes, or Children's Items, or Coasters.

Creating thematic plastic canvas crafts projects is simply one of the easiest and most powerful ways to stand out from the crowd, grab the attention of the judges and make them love your entry!

Secret #2: If you want a sure-fire way to impress the judges, use embellishments to add your own special creative touches to patterns! The judges absolutely love it when you think outside the box by adding embellishments to spice up your plastic canvas projects! There are many types of embellishments that can make your plastic canvas project sparkle with uniqueness and creativity. You can use beads, buttons, craft cord, doll-head ornaments, Christmas ornaments, embroidery floss, flags, fabric, flowers, foam letters, glitter, lace, metallic wrapping paper, patches, plastic canvas shapes, raffia, rhinestones, ribbon, sequins and stars. Your choices are almost endless. Let's go back to one of the examples in Secret #1, the plastic canvas vase with a Fourth of July patriotic theme.

What could you do to jazz-up a project like that, with embellishments? With a regular plastic canvas vase designed for household decor, you'd probably buy some brightly colored plastic flowers with long stems at your local crafts shop, then cut a piece of Styrofoam to fit snugly into the vase, and stick the stems of the flowers into the Styrofoam so your vase becomes a warm floral centerpiece for a coffee table or mantle. That's a nice embellishment. But it's pretty standard fare. So for your Fourth of July theme project, you're going to get a little bit more creative.

For example, instead of flowers, you might consider creating a burst of patriotic colors coming from up out of the vase, like fireworks. To do this, you need to visit your local crafts store and get some patriotic-themed embellishments. For example, in most well-stocked craft stores you can frequently find small American flags on long wooden stems. I've also seen colorful red, white and blue stars attached by small threads to similar long wooden stems that can be poked into the Styrofoam base of your vase. There are any number of colorful patriotic-themed embellishments you can use in place of flowers to create a "fireworks"-like effect coming up out of the vase. Once you have these items, all you have to do is fit your Styrofoam into the vase as usual, and arrange the items strategically by sticking the long wooden stems down into the Styrofoam, just as you would do if you were using long-stemmed plastic flowers.

You can even make some embellishments of your own for a project like this. Simply get some toothpicks to use as "stems." And get some red, white and blue metallic foil available at any crafts store. Just cut the foil into 4" x 4" squares. Take one foil square and one toothpick, and carefully roll the foil square into a funnel shape so that the closed end of the funnel fits tightly around one end of the toothpick. Attach the closed end of the "funnel" to the toothpick end with a drop of glue. Then stick the other end of the toothpick into the Styrofoam base so that the brightly colored funnel sticks up out of the vase. Make five or six of these brightly colored red-white-and-blue foil embellishments and arrange them strategically in the vase. This helps create your Fourth of July fireworks "burst" effect. The bottom line is that judges absolutely love it when you put this kind of effort and creativity into a project!

Secret #3: Use "modeling" to come up with your own unique designs! The judges have been doing their jobs for many years and have seen perhaps thousands of projects with thousands of designs, often the same basic ones over and over again. So you can bet it's a true pleasure for them when someone enters a project with design they've never seen done on plastic canvas.

To come up with your own designs, look with a discerning eye at the designs in common items such as clothing, table cloths, carpeting, floor tiles, wall paper, bed spreads and other objects with designs in them, so that literally every time you step outside of your home for travel or shopping you come back with fabulous new ideas for designs. If you travel and stay at hotels from time to time look at the designs in everything: the wallpaper in your hotel room, the carpeting, rugs, bedspreads, curtains and even floor tiles. The idea is to use your imagination to modify and incorporate these designs into your plastic canvas patterns. This is called "modeling."

For example, you can look at a zigzag design on a blouse you found at Sears, modify that design slightly, and incorporate it into a plastic canvas project or pattern you are working on. Just a short while back, I created a whole new set of original plastic canvas crafts projects - including a vase, tissue box, photo box, and picture frame - simply by looking at the designs in a new throw rug in my daughter's living room during a visit to her home! I've also found great ideas for plastic canvas pattern designs simply by going to the local library and looking through books about artwork, home decor and even books about other types of crafts. I've even found cool designs on the labels of bottled products in my kitchen or bathroom, and modified them to fit plastic canvas projects I was working on. Because there are designs in just about everything, the possibilities of coming up with new designs for your plastic canvas projects are endless. All you have to do is use your imagination to modify the design just enough to fit whatever plastic canvas project you are working on.

Secret #4: Create your own items from scratch! Once you have found the design you want to use, you have to decide what kind of item you want to put that design on, such as a tissue box cover, a vase, a trinket box, a pillow or others. Often, using your own unique design is enough to impress the socks off the judges. However, to help guarantee a blue ribbon, you can go one step further and come up with a unique item as well.

Remember, the judges have seen every kind of finished plastic canvas crafts project imaginable, everything from Barbie Cruise Ships to the Gingerbread Houses, and more. So to really impress them, you have to come up something they haven't seen yet. For example, one year the theme in our local county fair was "My How Time Flies When You're Having Fun." I was stumped briefly because it was such an unusual theme, and I wanted to create something completely unique, my own original item with my own design on it. Fortunately, as I was watching television one evening, I saw a show about the colorful hot air balloon contest held each year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since I grew up there as a child, this really caught my attention. I was nostalgic for "home," where once each year hundreds of hot air balloon enthusiasts descend upon the New Mexico desert in their multi-colored balloons, creating a spectacular sight that thousands of people come from miles around to see. While I was watching the show, it suddenly hit me: Hot air balloons fly. And time also "flies." But how could I combine these two separate concepts into a unique plastic canvas theme project that would win the crafts competition at my local county fair? I carefully examined the hot air balloons on the show, and quickly drew one on a scrap of paper so I wouldn't forget the basic shape and proportions of the balloon and its connected basket.

Then I went to my local crafts store, and found a Bezel mini clock that would fit perfectly into a round piece of plastic canvas. It's the kind that woodworkers use to inset into a piece of wood in order to make a beautiful polished wood timepiece for the mantle or coffee table. I chose the smallest of these miniature clocks – 1 3/8" across its face. Now I had the basic idea for my project firmly in mind. I would create a one-dimensional hot air balloon pattern, and cut a hole into the pattern near the top of the balloon. The hole would be just big enough to hold the miniature Bezel clock. I would then cut some supporting plastic canvas to help hold the clock in the hole, and stitch around it so that the clock became part of the balloon. Now I had a hot air balloon pattern with a clock embedded in it near the top of the balloon. Next, I would stitch the fair theme onto the balloon pattern, just below the clock, so that it read, "My how time flies when you're having fun!" I used some white scalloped ribbon as an embellishment to create a lattice-like border around the words, so they would stand out more, and to give the balloon some of the same kind of fancy eye-catching pizzazz the real balloons in Albuquerque had. Then I stitched two modified staircase designs onto the balloon, one up the entire left side of the balloon from top to bottom, and one up the right side.

Finally, I stitched the balloon's basket using raffia instead of yarn, in order to imitate the effect of the course material used to make the baskets of the real balloons on television. And I used the white scalloped ribbon to create another lattice-like border embellishment across the top of the basket, again, for eye-catching pizazz. I had done it! I tied the two concepts of flight and time together in a unique way, and in the process created a completely unique plastic canvas item and design.

But did the judges like it? Well, I won the Fair Theme, First Place and Best of class, and got three more beautiful ribbons to add to my collection, not to mention a small cash prize! You can see photos of the finished piece in my new book, Plastic Canvas Crafts Secrets, on page 84.

Secret #5: When you stitch always cover all the plastic -- the judges are very fussy about this! Judges don't like sloppy or lazy work. They want you to take the time to cover all of the plastic, so that your finished project is like a painting – no canvas showing.

So no matter what you make, be sure to cover all the corners. If you need to stitch two or three or sometimes even four stitches in the same hole that's fine, as long as it lays flat and no canvas shows. When using a straight stitch you normally can see the canvas between stitches. Your work will look much neater if you stitch twice in the same hole side by side making sure both stitches lay flat. When you finish you won't see any canvas between the stitches, and the judges will see that you are as meticulous and detail-oriented about stitching your projects as they are about judging them.

Secret #6: Always use a variety of stitches and a good combination of colors. Judges like to see colors that are pleasing to the eyes! Picking the right colors of yarn and the right stitches makes all the difference in how your finished project will turn out. Make sure your stitches are tight, lay flat, and if you use something like ribbon make sure it is not twisted. Make sure your yarn is new and is not frayed or snagged. If you don't cut all the sharp little nubs off your canvas your yarn can get caught on them and snag and will not look good at all.

Most every stitch will require a different amount of holes. So before you start stitching, count to make sure your piece has the right amount of holes to complete the pattern of stitches you've chosen. That way, when you get to the end of the row you just stitched, you won't have an extra hole or two left unstitched. When that happens, the only choices you would have are to start over, or cut off the extra row and change the pattern a bit. You can then take the stitches out all the way back to the middle, then start stitching toward the middle from the opposite end, and whatever holes are left over fill them in. But the bottom line is that if you count your holes first to make sure your chosen stitch fits the pattern, you won't have to deal with such a frustrating and time consuming fix.

Secret #7: Make sure your project is sturdy enough to stand up to the rigors of competition! When you need to sew pieces together make sure the holes line up and your project is sturdy enough to stand up on its own. Also, make sure the seams of the plastic are completely covered by stitching twice in each hole. This extra effort puts your finished piece in a class of its own, and truly impresses the judges. If you have something large and it needs to stand up on its own, place a piece of cardboard between the front and back pieces of plastic canvas; this will make your project sturdy. Sometimes you are required to bring your items to the fair to be judged 3 or 4 weeks before the fair opens. Your items are going to be handled quite a bit during that time so you don't want your items to come apart or start to lean after you have delivered them to be judged. Your items should remain just the way you made them from the time you drop them off to the time you go and pick them up. You will get such a thrill when you see all your fabulous Ribbons and you will learn so much about how the judges perceive your work by the comments and your score cards that you will be a pro in no time!

Secret #8: Enter an item into every class! Usually, crafts competitions have a number of divisions, and within those divisions there are a number of classes. For example, there might be a division for needlepoint, a division for ceramics, a division for stained glass, a division for quilting, a division for plastic canvas, etc. And each division is usually broken down into a number of classes. In plastic canvas, for example, depending upon the rules of the competition, you might have anywhere from three to 12 different classes, ranging from Tissue Boxes to Coasters to Children's Items to Holiday Items and many others. You will greatly multiply your opportunities for bringing home a blue ribbon by entering at least one item into every class.

For example, in my neck of the woods we have the San Bernardino County Fair, which holds a huge crafts competition every year. And in the Competition Handbook distributed by the Fair, under the section for Crafts, you will find the Division you are going to enter, which in this case is Plastic Canvas. And under the Plastic Canvas division, the various classes listed are (1) Boxes (2) Children's Items (3) Christmas Items (4) Coasters (5) Clocks (6) Holiday other than Christmas (7) Door Stopper (8) Tissue Box (9) Wall Hanging (10) Any other, describe. In this example, you have the opportunity to enter 10 different classes, which means you have the potential to win up to 10 blue ribbons if you enter at least one item into every class. Now don't count on winning 10 blue ribbons, of course you might win some red (second place) or white (third place) ribbons too. But by entering one or more projects into every class, you greatly multiply your chances of coming home with a blue ribbon! In fact, by following this strategy, as well as the other six strategies above, I have never come home from a crafts competition without at least one blue ribbon, and usually multiple blue ribbons.

Remember you want to enter as many classes as you can to bring home as many ribbons as you can. In many county fair crafts competitions, if you win Best of Show, Best of Class, Best of Division and First place, you then qualify to enter that winning item into the State Fair, where you will compete with crafters from all over the state. This is a real kick, because you get to see what the "best of the best" has to offer, and you can really learn a lot. This is why I say that everything is done in the spirit of competition, but in reality, it is a teaching and learning experience for everybody. We all have something to show each other, and we can all learn something new from each other.

Secret #9: Carefully read your Competition Handbook and be sure to follow the rules! The rules in every plastic canvas crafts competition are just a little bit different. But judges are always very adamant that they be followed to a "t". No matter how good you are, never become such a prima donna that you think the rules don't apply to you. It can cost you dearly, in terms of the judges' scoring. For example, if you fail to enter your project into the right class because you did not read the rules, it can be rejected altogether by the judges. Also, be sure to carefully follow entry deadline dates, as late projects will usually not be accepted. And never forget to include your entry fee, or you'll take yourself out of the competition before it ever gets started. Another example: In some competitions, all plastic canvas wall-hangings or picture frames must have some kind of stitched in loop or other attached device so the piece can be hung. Even if your entry is not hung, but is laid out on a display table instead, if it is a wall-hanging or picture frame the judges may still want the hanger built-in to the project. The bottom line is that if you really want to win, you have to be careful to follow all of the rules!

Secret #10: Always read the judges' comments on your entered items, and learn from what they say! One of the best ways to start winning is to learn from the judges' scoring comments on your entries after the competition is over. In most competitions, entries are scored on a numerical basis, and the higher your numerical score the closer you come to winning the blue ribbon. Fortunately, in many competitions the judges briefly explain why they gave you the score they did. If you received a good score, the judge might briefly congratulate you and tell you what he or she liked best about your entry. And if you received a low score, the judge might offer some constructive criticism. So depending upon your entries, you might have comments from the judges that run from congratulations like "I really loved the way you double-stitched the corners so the plastic doesn't show") to constructive criticism like "Those frayed edges really cost you some points on this one…sorry!" If you will take their congratulations and their constructive criticisms to heart, and learn from them, you will know what to do next time to make your entries even better. I promise you, if you do this, it will not be long before you are bringing home the blue ribbon every time!