2007 Christmas door decorating contest at Ballyhoo High School

First, a link to last year's contest winner.


And now, the winners of this year's contest:

First place:

This entry was based on Where's Waldo and featured tiny pictures of students' and teachers' faces on Christmas cards and other images, and onlookers had to search for the principal's face among the crowd. Very smart and funny!!

Second place:

Since several of the varsity football seniors were in this teacher's class, they created a football-themed decoration.

Third place:
In this class, the students created paper ornaments on the computer and printed them out. I was impressed with how many of them turned out, too.

My door didn't even place in the top three this year, but let me tell you -- the competition was FIERCE and the entries were outstanding. I was rather pleased; last year at the Other Place it seemed as though no-one took much of an interest except for my class. This year, everyone was in the spirit of things, and I was tickled about it. I'd rather the whole place get excited, to be honest. It's much more fun than winning.

Nonetheless, I've included the photos of my 2007 Christmas Door Decorating Contest entry along with descriptions for how it was done:


I borrowed this year's idea from the same place as last year, an online outfit called TriSanta.com. They have Christmas cards that are triathlon-themed, as well as a few others that are just extreme-sports related. Great stuff, all of it.

Anyway, really good Christmas cards are an excellent source for door-decorating ideas, if you're ever in need of one.

A close-up of the top lettering:

Here you can see the sparkly background and border. These were created with giftwrap. I bought the background giftwrap specifically because it reminded me of water. The border is also giftwrap cut into four-inch-wide strips and trimmed into 1cm wide fringe. This sort of work is ideal for students to sit and do while they're gossiping about who texted who last night.


Here you can see a better image of the surfboard, which was also created with giftwrap and fringed with curling ribbon to simulate water.

All the lettering was created using Word, picking out a font and text I wanted, increasing its size, then making it into "outline" form. Once printed out, the students used colored pencils to put designs on them, then I took them home and used Tulip Fabric Paint to outline them all with glittery border. Once dry the next morning, we cut them all out and glued them to the door. I taped them first with temporary tape so we could get the spacing right.

Fun!!!