Creative Wins Round-up

Having just received an email today for my first win of 2015, which was 3rd prize for my jewellery post, I thought I would do a round-up of creative wins from last year. I did a similar post last January looking back at 2013.

I know that some of my readers regularly enter my giveaways, but have you tried creative competitions too? They are fun and usually have a lot less entries too. I’ve been lucky with photo, cookery, video, blog post, pinterest and instagram competitions in 2014. And there are plenty for the children too, although I have to say that my boys have been a lot less interested in drawing and colouring this year. They usually prefer to spend time playing on their ipods but they still make time for fun activity based competitions. However they’ve got clever now – when I mention a competition, they ask me what the prize is and then they decide if they want to enter.

Starting with the boys.  Here are  their winning pictures.

Son2 won a “Bright Stanley” book for his fish picture

Son2 was very proud to receive his prize at school in the John Lewis story competition

Son1 won a comouflage suit for his flowers

And the boys regularly took part in This Mummy Loves Draw With Me monthly linky and struck lucky in September winning a box of crafting goodies. Sadly it looks like the linky has now stopped.

The boys had great fun doing the Warburtons Half & Half Term Games sports challenges and we won lots of sports kit for this photo of the boys doing the short jump.

Doing the Short Jump

We won £100 of Amazon vouchers for our photo of son2 as a #sunaware superhero. He then also featured in the #sunaware video.

Son2 as a #sunaware superhero

We won £50 of Co-op vouchers for this fun photo where son2 refused to look at the camera as he didn’t want to see the heart he was holding.

Our Local Loved Trusted winning entry

A top tip is to always take several different photos. Son2 won a set of Sue Hendra books and a Mr Potato Head costume for this photo of Mr Potato Head that he made.

Son2 hiding behind his Mr Potato Head

Plus another shot of Mr Potato Head won him a runner’s up book in a different competition.

Son2’s Mr Potato Head

We also subsequently entered the photo of him hiding behind Mr Potato Head into another competition for which he won a magazine subscription. So three prizes for making Mr Potato Head, not bad.

Son1 won a runner’s up Nature Explorer backpack containlng binoculars and other goodies for his Robot #rollmodel. Son2 also entered but wasn’t so lucky.

Son1’s robot #rollmodel

The boys won some toys for their road safety creativity.

Road safety

And son2 is still waiting for some books he won last month for drawing Hairy Maclary online. The boys both seem just as comfortable drawing on either a computer with the mouse or on a tablet with their finger as they do with a piece of paper.

Yet Another Blogging Mummy started last year with yet another win with Mission Deli Wraps having done very well with them already in in 2013. This time my Elf wrap won me some festive DVDs which we waited until this Christmas to watch. The boys loved The Grinch best. And as far as I could tell, nobody else even entered this one.

I won DVDs for my ELF wrap

My recipe for Mini Garlic Pizza Wraps won 3rd prize in a Gourmandize competition, which was a month’s subscription to Bonjour French Food, who kindly then gave me a 2nd month free as they had a spare box. We really enjoyed these, so I purchased a gift box for a close friend for Christmas.

My Vine #willitgrill video won 3rd prize, a barbeque and even better, I was supporting Cancer Research by entering. With son1 undergoing chemotherapy, I try to do all I can to support cancer charities.

Having got an iPhone this year, I tried my luck at Instagram competitions and won £50 of John Lewis vouchers for my #iloveadvice photo.

My winning Instagram photo

There are always plenty of creative competitions at Halloween for costumes and pumpkin carving. These are probably a little more popular than most creative competitions, so we were pleased that our pumpkin won us tickets to Harry Potter World. We are looking forward to our trip there sometime this year.

Our winning pumpkin

My Green Pancakes recipe blog post won £100 Sainsburys vouchers and my tyre safety blog post won £250 John Lewis vouchers. And who would have thought that just eating biscuits could net us a prize. But it did, I won £100 John Lewis vouchers for my 42 Days of Summer blog post.

I’ve also tried entering Pinterest competitions and my board for the #VCLifeHacks competition won me a £50 Amazon voucher.

Other creative wins were a photo of my Asparagus Frittata which won me a spices hamper. And enhancing a photo of son2 using the Appy App, won us some juice. And a photo of me munching on a cookie I made won me a personalised recipe folder. And I submitted my existing Christmas Lights blog post from last year to a competition. I didn’t win the main prize but did get a £25 lighting voucher. I also won £100 Red Letter Day voucher for a photo of myself covered in post-it notes. Gosh I did look silly but the prize certainly made it worth while.

And I can’t end without a word of thanks to SuperLucky Di who has inspired me to focus my comping on creative competitions. Sorry Di that we didn’t win the Autumn/Winter 14 Blogger Style Challenge, although we did make the shortlist.