Western Idaho Fair 2011

Last year, we got a bug to enter things in the "State" fair (it's not a state fair, nor a county fair; it's regional). It just seems like a good thing to do when you live in a rural state like Idaho.

I entered some photos and a scrapbook page last year. I never really counted on winning; it was participating that mattered. But when my scrapbook page got a score of 2 out of 10, I just had to find out what was going on.

Last year's entry

So I found out who to email, and was quite surprised to get a reply! Turns out the judges had never seen a digital page, and thought it was weird. Okay, I can see that. They were used to cute stickers and paper cutouts and hand-written cutesy captions. Fine, I just wanted to know. I thought that maybe next time, I'd submit a page that was more like what they were used to.

But a few months later, I got another email saying that they had found someone to judge a new digital scrapbooking division! I couldn't believe that I'd had a hand in starting something new! So I tried to spread the word, so we'd have enough entries to keep the division alive.

One of my friends came through for me and entered a layout. And today, she sent me a link to the results of the contest. Oh, I wish I could go see all the entries! We know there were at least four entered, because four places were awarded. And for the first time in my life, I won something at the fair! My layout about Zach's seizure came in first!

Especially after such dismal reviews last year, I really didn't know what kind of layout would go over well. I picked this one because I thought it showed a lot of the great things about digital scrapbooking, like the giant photo that fades into a background, with other photos and the journaling on top of it. And I figured that telling a story would probably help, too, since last year's was all about the photo and it didn't have any text at all.

I was very pleased to see that my friend took 3rd place! I hope she, and others, will enter again next year, and we can keep this new division going!

Our only regret is that we can only enter one layout. Most of the other hobby divisions have subdivisions, so you can enter more than one example of your work. It's super hard to just pick one!

Jared and I also entered some photography, but as far as we can tell, we didn't win anything there. Bummer. I guess Jared will remain the only award-winning photographer in the family (from his win last year)!