Category: Create A Greeting Card Scholarship Contest

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.

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.