Bucks and Blue Ribbons

I just brought home 57 bucks from the county fair. Who knew? I had been waffling for several days about rather or not I wanted to enter my scrapbook pages in the fair.
Risks: The pages would get beat up or lost
I wouldn’t win anything and be humiliated
I would win something and other scrappers would resent me
It wouldn’t be worth my time
My pages would be scrap lifted
Benefits: I get to show off my work
If I do win, I can do a little self promotion
On paper, the risks outweighed the benefits. But I decided to just go ahead and enter some pages, along with my lawn chair, based on the self promotion line in the benefit column. I need to make some more money, and one way to do it is to scrapbook pages for other people and teach some scrapbook classes.
I spent the Sunday before the fair going through my book, pulling everything that might fit in the categories and came up with 16 layouts to enter. The entry book said “only ribbons” would be awarded, so I didn’t expect to get any cash for my efforts.
On the Monday before the fair I spent an hour filling out all the little slips of paper and attaching them to my entries.
When I took my kids to the fair on Friday, L was very impressed by the “Best of Show” ribbons, but I didn’t see any of them attached to my pages. However, I was pleased to see three sweepstakes awards.
But today, when I went to pick up the pages, I couldn’t find my “Zoo Encounter” layout, until someone helped me. Sure enough, there was a comet sized ribbon attached to it (along with $20 prize money).
L was very impressed by my winnings. He sat right down with me and organized all the ribbons in piles, while DH and I ripped the comments off the cards and read them.
It turned out to be a fun little reward for my effort.
Comments included: “Love the idea! Very cute page”
“Cute picture, wow- awesome sewing loved it!” (this was attached to the “Act Like You Love Each Other” page)
“Very cute concept! I would have liked to see a picture of you on the page.” (as if!)
Mostly they liked the photography ~ the two pages I submitted with a lot of doodling were given red ribbons; they were the only red ribbons I received. Hum, I guess the judges are not in on the doodling trend yet.
Anyway, it proved to be a rewarding experience in many ways.