Go For It!

Recently I received some good news. During the month of August the print-on-demand marketplace, Zazzle where I regularly sell some of my designs held a contest looking for new Baby Shower, Holiday, Birthday and Wedding collections. So, I was busy much of August creating new artwork and new collections for their Mega Moments Contest. Well, my hard work paid off and my “That 70s Christmas Collection” was selected as a Collector’s Choice Winner. You can see my winning collection here and all of the Mega Moments Contest winners here.

Now, to give credit where credit is due. The collection was really Ron’s idea. Well, it was his idea for a theme for our annual Christmas card. (Sometimes these annual cards can get quite involved. To make last year’s we had to dig a leaf blower out of the garage, but I digress.) Anyway, we may still do a 1970s themed Christmas card this year, but in the meantime I decided to use this idea for creating my holiday collection for the Zazzle contest.

One of the things that Zazzle was looking for with this challenge was for creators to submit our own original “cover photos,” that is product shots of the items or “mockup images” that fit with our product’s design. So, here’s where living in a house that was built in the 1970s and still needs some updating was a real advantage. For example, on the photo above that wonderfully 1970s background is the Con-Tact paper that’s on a shelf in the basement storage room. Anyway, I definitely had a lot of fun taking some photos and creating some product mockups that really reflected my collection’s theme.

Now, if it wasn’t for Zazzle’s contest, I’m not sure that I would have put this much effort into the collection. I’m glad I did, and I’m glad that the Zazzle contest challenged me to go the extra mile. I should also point out that while I did have a winning entry in the Mega Moments Contest, my Christmas collection was not the only collection I created for the challenge.

I hardly see my non-winning entries as a waste of time, though. For starters, some of them have already generated some sales. Zazzle’s contest challenged me to up my game, and I’m thankful for that. Of course, I could have done all this without any contest, but sometimes some of us need a little extra push.

We seem to have entered the “challenge” time of the year. While many of us know this month as October, some of my artsy readers know it as Inktober. This annual challenge asks artists to create works for different prompts each day of the month. It’s a great way to find some inspiration and perhaps create an awesome work of art that you never would have created without a little bit of prodding.

Immediately following October is November or as many of my writer friends know it NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. As the name suggests, its when determined and intrepid writers attempt to write an entire novel in the month of November. I’ll admit that I write too slowly to even consider such a challenge, but I salute all of you that take up the gauntlet. Even when you aren’t quite able to get out a whole novel during November, the challenge will at least drive you to make significant progress on your draft.

I love participating in regular design challenges like Spoonflower’s weekly surface pattern design challenges and Threadless’s t-shirt design challenges. In fact I just created this t-shirt design for a new Threadless design:

Could I have created an evil mushroom t-shirt without the prompting of Threadless’s Mushroom Underworld design challenge? Sure, but would I have? Well, probably not. So, it’s good to be challenged, now and again.

If you’re considering participating in a challenge or contest of your own, then I say go for it. You never know what might come of it. Even if it’s not a formal challenge, pushing ourselves to try new things or strive to achieve something that might seem out of reach is a great way to grow. So, whatever endeavors are on your horizon I wish you success, and even when you don’t quite hit the target, there are still good things that can come from your efforts.

— Alissa