Maggie Stiefvater ARC Contest...

So, I entered an ARC contest this week to try to win a copy of The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater. I didn't win, which wasn't surprising considering the HUGE amounts of talent and creativity out there. However, it was a super fun art contest where you could paint, draw, sculpt, film, sing or do anything creative to show your love of the book. I wish more writers would do contests like this!! The winning entries were SO cool. One person made a video, the other (my fave) made a truly amazing board game. If any of you guys are fans of Maggie, or love the book The Raven Boys, you need to check out the winners HERE. 

And, even though I didn't win, I wanted to share my entry with you

guys. It was a lot of fun to get to express my love of the book and characters. The link to my entry is HERE and, if you want to read about some of the processes I used to create it, the blog I wrote to go with the entry is below--but I'm omitting all the parts that might be spoilery in case you haven't read the book. Hope you guys like it! 

Have any of you ever entered a contest like this, or created something about your favorite book? What was it? 

BLOG ON CONTEST ENTRY:

This is my entry for Maggie Stiefvater’s ARC contest. First of all, I’d like to say that Maggie is my hero. Every time I think she can’t get any better, she does. LOVE The Raven Boys!  In the interest of keeping this short, I’ll stop gushing now and tell you a little about my entry…

To start, I’d like to point out the blue and red swirls on the raven that’s perched in the tree. I tried to make the raven look similar to the cover of the book. (Actually, I was quite sad to realize that, in the video, you can’t tell that the raven’s chest is red. You’ll just have to trust me on that. haha) The raven was hand-sculpted out of clay, carved with designs and baked. I then paint-washed it to make the red and blue swirls. 

Next we have Gansey’s famous orange Camaro—aka “the pig.” Of course, they didn’t have any orange Camaro’s at Target, so I had to get a red one, paint it and add some cool stripes. The road that the car is driving on is a sampling of tarot cards drawn by the different characters during their reading. 

The road of tarot cards leads to the tomb of the King of Glendower. The King and his tomb are both hand-sculpted and paint-washed brown to age them.Next is Noah. DESCRIPTION OF NOAH DELETED IN THE INTEREST OF SPOILERS.

After him we come to Gansey sitting on top of his  journal, which was painstakingly put together by cutting and gluing together an old writing journal of mine.  I wish I had a better picture of the different papers sticking out the side, but I was running out of time so I was forced to use a not-so-great picture to get this in by the dead line.(my stupid computer kept crashing) DETAILS ABOUT GANSEY OMITTED

By the middle of the road is Adam. I  tried to capture the fragility of his “pretty” looks.I also tried to make him look very put together. If you look closely, you can see the  raven on Adam’s pocket. He’s standing on a sculpted pentacle. Next is Ronan, leaning against the tree looking irritable  Ronan is also in his school clothes, although I did my best to make them look as disreputable as possible. haha. 

Lastly, we come to Blue. ALL DETAILS ABOUT THIS PART OMITTED. 

Just as a few final details.All the characters have a black feather somewhere around them. There is also a large, but subtle, ley-line symbol.

After I finally finished, my husband (who also loved the book) took hours and hours learning how to work Sony Vegas Pro-12—a software editing program so he could zoom in and out and across the canvas and do other cool stuff I don’t really understand. Plus he added music. He contributed at least six or seven hours to this project because he thought a video would be way cooler than just a photo. He is awesome, so I needed to give him his props.

 I worked on this every day this week—it probably ended up taking about thirty to forty hours if I include my husbands time. Obviously it was worth it because even if I don’t win (which I don’t expect to, having seen the crazy amount of talent in the other entries) I had a ton of fun. I also have a cool reminder of the Raven Boys to hang on my bedroom wall AND my husband knows a new software program. haha

In ending, I’d like to say that The Raven Boys is one of the only books I’ve ever read that  left me like I had a hole inside me that I didn’t know how to fill once  the book was finished. I mean it. I was depressed for like two days because I missed Blue and her boys. So thanks for such great characters and all the hours of joy! Also, huge thanks for hosting such a great contest!! Hope you like my entry!