Michaels, North America’s largest arts and crafts specialty retailer, launched its first ever “Handmade Holiday Contest” on November 1, and will be awarding two $100 gift cards awarded every week through December 20. Customers can upload photos of their handmade gifts at Michaels.com, and website visitors can rate their favorite entries online. Two grand prize winners will be selected – one grand prize winner for “Best Creative Project” and one grand prize winner for “Best Creative Project under $20”. Each grand prize winner will get a $250 gift card and a trip for two to New York City to see The Martha Stewart Show. Visit http://www.michaelscontest.com/details for more information.
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Have you read?
12 Masculine Scrapbook Layouts for Men
Kat’s fun masculine birthday layout has a lot of white space with a bit of confetti thrown around, a cool mixed title with some stamping and amazing banners across the top. The banners are made from bakers twine with rectangle, fishtail and round flags folded over, cut from different pattern papers. I spotted her idea on the Krafty Kat 9 Instagram page.
With Father’s Day over you might be thinking about scraping those photos of Dad you took or just about designing masculine scrapbook layouts in general. I know they can be a bit challenging but think about using richer, darker color combinations, masculine patterns like plaids, stripes, chevron and stars as well as incorporating activities they enjoy doing to create the perfect page for the men in your life. Let’s take a look today at some ideas for masculine layouts for Father’s Day and Beyond.
Jan’s father and son concert layout has a layered wide border, a custom die cut letters and alphabet stickers title and neat music related embellishments. Her main photo of the guys is the largest balanced with two concert pics to the side with room for journaling as well. Visit the Jana Eubank blog for all the details.
Manasa’s layout has some simple paper weaving of distressed strips of cardstock with stitching, this adds so much great color and texture to the page! She also added a few embellishments, gems and stitched down the sticker letter title too. Take a closer look at her Manasa Vavilapalli Instagram page.
Black and white with a pop of a single color is perfect for a formal mens layout like Sara did here using a bold yellow for the background. I love the large die cut title and how she placed one of the photo inside of a letter! Since this is for a wedding she also included sweet wedding embellishments and sentiments. Learn more at A Cherry on Top blog.
Even though Erin’s page theme is actually nautical this is a great design theme for any masculine layout that isn’t. Red, white and blue work perfectly with lots of sea life, rope, maps, buttons and ink splatters for a maritime feel. I came across her idea at the Not Just for Boys Instagram page.
Julie’s awesome layout keeps all the action vertically down the center with long strips and stripes of paper, stitching, string and ribbon, anchored by two half circles. There’s tons of great texture from wooden words, metal buttons, staples, sewing, fabric patches and more. Take a closer peek at the Hey Little Magpie blog.
Black and grey are perfect for guys, it’s also a fun challenge for yourself to dig through your stash and find everything you can that’s black and grey. Kim’s design has lots of thick chipboard arrows and tickets forming a border to the side of the photo along with layers of different grungy pattern papers and tearing too. Visit the Kimew Instagram page for more info.
Pocket pages are a easy and quick way to create masculine designs. Traci filled the left side with photos of a fishing trip adding a single sentiment strip. The other side is just one pattern paper but with a thick acrylic title, a small journaling label and some more sentiment strips, it’s so clean and simple. She breaks it all down at the Traci Reed Designs blog.
Sophies outdoorsy design has an amazing background made of strips of ruler papers in rustic colors stacked along the top and bottom of the photo. Some are torn, some are stitched and over top she layered buttons, gems, tied tags, scattered stars with larger accents like a compass, deer and a circle for journaling. I spotted this on the So Scrappy Instagram page.
For the guy who loves to travel is a wonderful layout from Angela with a large circular photo in the center with a stitched round matt and colorful vehicles all around. There’s also stitching around the background pattern paper and the title and speech bubbles are in similar colors to the cars. Find more info at the I Need Confetti blog.
For men who love to work on cars here’s a double page spread from Erin. She used rustic pattern papers in black and tan with lots of cool die cut gears with realistic looking heat embossed rust, ink pad smearing and torn vellum on the journaling. Learn more at the Crafty Concepts with Erin Instagram page.
Tarrah created an amazing tent she drew and cut from plaid pattern paper to frame her camping layout, using twine to “tie” up the sides. Around the photos are some florals and insects along with a thick acrylic camper and date label. The title is also acrylic with more flowers and a bird house accent. Find more info at the Bramble Fox blog.
I hope you’ve been inspired today to create some cool layouts for all the guys you love!
-Heather
Looking for Father’s day papers, stamps, and Embellishments? then check out these Father’s day designs on A Cherry On Top
I have been rating a friend’s entry in Michaels’ Handmade Holiday Contest. Her Christmas decoration has over 1500 “five star” ratings. The rules encourage entrants to get as many high ratings as they can because the ratings are advertised as significant in the selection of the winners. The two Week Three winners had 700+ and 300+ “four star” ratings. The leading entry has over 13,000 “five star” ratings. I think Michaels is sending a message that ratings are not significant, if considered at all.
My friend wishes she had not entered this contest who now thinks this is a “gotcha” to get entrant’s email addresses. I think the online ratings part of this is a sham and believe this contest should be boycotted.
I agree with Sherry’s comment. Looks to me like Michael’s Handmade Holiday contest is a publicity stunt. Contrary to their scoring rules, the ratings don’t seem to matter at all. I just looked at the newest (week 4) winners: One is a “JOY” plaque with 319 “4 snowmen” ratings, the other is a mistletoe scarf with 13… that’s right … thirteen “four snowmen” ratings!
I found fourteen entries with over a thousand ratings … the leader has 27,000 ratings. The way winners are picked appears very arbitrary to me and I think Michaels should be ashamed. For my part, I promise to never shop Michaels again.
It does look like Michaels is picking weekly “winners” at random. Ratings do appear to be ignored. And as far as I can tell, quality, creativity, originality … blah, blah … aren’t getting carefully considered either. After looking at the week 3 and 4 winners, I am convinced my entering this contest has been a waste of time. If other folks who entered this contest are regular Michaels customers like me, I encourage them to voice their disgust about this contest to store managers as I hope to get a chance to do tomorrow.