Category: Create A Greeting Card Scholarship Contest

The Finalists have been Chosen

After sorting through the 8,000+ entries received for the 3rd Annual Create-A-Greeting-Card $10,000 Scholarship Contest, our judges picked 143 designs to qualify as finalists. We’ve created a slideshow that displays all of the finalists’ designs, so please be sure to check it out.

If you are a finalist, we encourage you to share the good news with your family and friends. We’ve made each slide an individual link, so you can email the URL to your greatest fans. Link information is located in the white box below each slide. If you or someone you know has a blog or website, we’ve also provided some basic code to make linking to your slide as easy as pie!

After the slideshow was put up, our judges found out that a few of the designs were not original. Please note that those designs were disqualified from the finalist pool and removed from the slideshow. Originality is a key factor for this scholarship contest. Please keep this in mind when you submit your entry for the 4th Annual Create-A-Greeting-Card $10,000 Scholarship Contest.

Tips for Getting Your Greeting Card Entry Considered by our Judges

I am on the scholarship committee, and I have seen things that make me wonder why anyone would enter a contest when they have no chance of winning. Now, that is a very negative thought to have, but really people! Here are a few tips that will increase your chances of having your entry considered.

1) Know your subject matter. We are a business-oriented greeting cards company. We will not be putting your sexy, half-dressed girlfriend on the front of our corporate holiday cards or business birthday cards. We don’t make Valentine’s Day cards or Halloween cards. Do some preliminary research by going through the website, and get a feel for what we are all about.

2) Submit original artwork. We are not looking for photocopies of our greeting cards or our competitors’ cards. Be original. Be creative. And be unique!

3) Don’t wait until the last minute. Waiting until last minute will not increase your chances of winning; in fact, it is risky because you may miss the deadline. Also, you are putting yourself in a worse position by not giving the judges time to examine your work when there is a sea of other last minute entries…and there are many!

4) Read and follow the criteria for judging. The criteria is posted on the scholarship page of our site (https://www.gallerycollection.com/greeting-cards-scholarship.htm), and they could not be clearer! Here’s the list for you to view:

  1. Overall aesthetic appeal
  2. Quality of execution
  3. Creativity and originality
  4. Successful incorporation of design elements
  5. Appropriateness for use as a greeting card
  6. Attractiveness to The Gallery Collection’s corporate and consumer customers
  7. Suitability as a design in Prudent’s Gallery Collection greeting cards line (see website for current designs)

And finally, good luck! I have seen some remarkable talent coming in. Please keep up the good work!!

Free DailyLit.com Downloads of College Knowledge: 101 Tips by David Schoem

In association with DailyLit.com and the University of Michigan Press, The Gallery Collection is sponsoring free downloads of the book, College Knowledge: 101 Tips, by David Schoem. The free downloads have been made possible by DailyLit.com, a digital publisher that sends books to readers in installments via email or RSS feed.

College Knowledge: 101 Tips

David Schoem is Faculty Director of the Michigan Community Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. Through his years of experience as an educator, he has written this book with the hopes of providing guidance to students entering their first years of college. His book is filled with advice, success stories, and anecdotal tips on how to make the transition into college as seamless as possible.

If you’re interested in signing up for free digital installments of College Knowledge: 101 Tips, please visit http://dailylit.com/books/college-knowledge-101-tips.

The Gallery Collection recognizes how important students are to the future of America, and we hope this book will be a beneficial resource to those who read it.

iPod Winners!!!!

Congratulations to the winners of the Apple 8GB iPod Nanos from the pool of scholarship finalists :

Bingjie Leng from Lutherville-Timonium, MD. Bingjie is 17 years old and attends Dulaney High School.

Sybil Lam from Pleasanton, CA. Sybil is 19 years old and attends New York University.

Andrea Binz from Ballwin, MO. Andrea is 15 years old and attends Visitation Academy.

Georgeta Ionescu from Panama City, FL. Georgeta is 18 years old and attends Bay High School.

Brittany Rugh from Carilisle, PA. Brittany is 18 years old and attends the Art Institute of York, PA.

We will be contacting the iPod winners shortly. And remember that the $10,000 winner will be announced on March 15th.

Holiday Card Aspirations

My friend Lisa is a fine arts student who dreams of becoming a Holiday card designer. I have been trying to find a way to help her use her skills, or maybe just learn how to get some recognition for her designs which could help her get a job after college. So when I heard of the Create-A-Greeting-Card Scholarship contest, I was really excited to tell her.

Lisa’s driving force is the support she receives from her family, friends, and professors, and she couldn’t wait to get started on her entry for the scholarship. Lisa designed a beautiful card depicting a Christmas inspired living room with a Christmas tree and stockings and greeting cards hanging from the mantle. It was a true work of art, and she told me that she felt like an actual artist and not just a student doing another assignment.

For Lisa, creating an entry for the scholarship contest validated her aspiration of becoming a greeting card designer. She submitted her design and now she just has to wait to see if her Christmas card is chosen as the winner of the $10,000 scholarship prize, which would help tremendously in paying for her college tuition. After all – it isn’t everyday that you find out about a scholarship such as this one.

Most Important Create A Greeting Card Contest Rule: Never Lose Faith in Yourself

The prospect of winning any scholarship contest, including a greeting card contest, is always an exhilarating notion…especially when the grand prize pertains to dollar signs. I’ll never forget a contest that I won when I was in middle school. My entire grade had to create an advertisement for a local restaurant. The winner would receive a $500 cash prize along with his or her ad featured in the community newspaper. $500 to a middle school student was a lot of money and I was set on winning that grand prize.

After receiving notice of the contest in school, I went straight home and began working diligently on my advertisement. I set up shop on my dining room table with construction paper, scissors, markers, colored pencils, and glue. After several hours of tracing, cutting, shading, and pasting, my masterpiece was complete. I was extremely proud of my creation and couldn’t wait to mail it in.

Over the next few weeks, I saw what some of my other classmates had created for the contest and I started losing faith in my design. My friend Josh took drawing lessons and his advertisement looked professionally done (and now that I think of it, it probably was). My other friend Dan drew cartoons in his free time and I thought his entry put mine to shame.

But low and behold, my name was announced as the grand prize winner! I spent so much time and energy doubting my work that I forgot about my own true creative potential. Sure enough, my advertisement was featured in the community newspaper and I received my $500 reward (only $50 of which I was allowed to keep because my mom made me put the rest in my savings account).

Often times with contests, it’s easy to think that you’re not going to win. So you doubt your own work or you don’t even bother entering the contest at all. But it’s crucial not to lose site of what’s really important – hard work pays off, so never lose faith in your intelligence or creativity.

So take my lesson to heart and go ahead and submit that entry to our 1st annual Create A Greeting Card Scholarship Contest because it is good enough! The entry can be as simple as a breath-taking photo of a winter scene or animals, or you can further showcase your creativeness with a more intricate original design for a particular occasion or the Holiday season.