Snap door contest TitleHi! Kendra here.

The summer after I graduated from high school, I spent a month as a Music Camp counselor in the residence hall at Northern Arizona University. I loved music camp! It was a great place to sharpen our skills, develop friendships with like-minded individuals, and have some silly fun! As counselors, we would help each set of roommates decorate their doors so that it was easy for everyone to get to know each other.

It is funny how much blogging conferences have in common with summer camp. We are sharpening skills, making friends, and getting as silly as grown women (and occasionally men) are allowed to get. Why not take the whole analogy a step further?

Supermom DoorLast year at SNAP!, we were blown away by the creativity and enthusiasm you all brought to the conference. You had business cards with treats attached, gifts for your roommates, decorations inside your hotel room, and a some of you even decorated your hotel doors, much like my music campers did back in the day!

We were inspired by the Supermoms (Bettijo and Aimee) of Paging Supermom, and the colorful decal they added to their door! It was a great way to reinforce their branding and help us remember that they were there to have fun and connect at the conference.

We were so inspired, that we’d love to see more of you follow their lead and decorate your doors to help create that fun atmosphere of bonding at the Springhill Suites Hotel–the official hotel for SNAP! Conference. So it is with great excitement that I announce the SNAP Conference Door Decorating Contest!

And as if having the honor of being recognized as having the most creative hotel room door isn’t incentive enough, we are sweeting the deal by providing $200 credit to the Queen Bee Market to the room taking the top honors!

I know you are running to call your roommate now! But before you do, let me outline a couple of rules and show you a couple of ideas to get those creative juices flowing.

RULES:

  1. The only adhesives that will be allowed to be used on the hotel property are approved 3M products. BUT, I have more good news–3M is one of our conference sponsors and are graciously providing us with materials for the contest. We will have product available for you to use at no cost!! (You might want to follow me on Twitter: @myinsanity, for updates on where/when to pick up supplies).
  2. Be smart about what personal information you include on your door. Your door can be an extension of your business card/branding, but you might not want to lay out all of your contact info there for the non-blogging guests at the hotel (if there be any).
  3. Door decorations need to be completed by 10:00pm on Thursday night (April 18), so that judges will have time to deliberate and pick winners in time to have their money to spend at the QBM on Friday!!
  4. The winning room will be responsible for splitting the prize among roommates equitably.
  5. HAVE FUN! Get creative with your door! We’ve seen what you guys can do and we know you are going to rock at this.

IDEAS:

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The Supermoms (Bettijo and Aimee), have graciously agreed to help me judge the competition, so you don’t have to worry about going up against them for the big prize, but if I were designing a door for them this year, I would do something like this door I created for a PTA event at my children’s school that had to do with superheroes.We turned the door into a phone booth.

Here’s a sample door decoration I created just for you, using a closet door in my house. It is totally fictitious, but fun!

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I’m actually not sure who my roommate(s) will be yet, but for this door, I borrowed the face of SNAP! team member, Emily Hill (Is This Really My Life?), because it’s so purty and because she would make an awesome roommate!

I started by covering the door with cool graphic wrapping paper from Target in one of our SNAP! signature colors. Doesn’t that look a little more snappy than a basic brown hotel door? (Don’t forget the 3M products when attaching to the door)! I used some heavy-duty double sided tape to attach my chalkboards to the wrapping paper. I printed out our headshots in black and white and cut them out and added them just below my conversation bubble chalkboards.SNAP! Doors-6333

I included each of our logos/blog headers, because–be honest–it’s hard to always remember who a blogger is unless you have that logo to associate them with.

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I raided my stash of ruffled crepe paper and decorations from other events to use to frame out our faces and let everyone know we are here to have FUN!

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The great thing about the chalkboard idea, is that we can change out our message for each day of camp–I mean the conference–to reflect the emotions of the moment. Kind of like a real Facebook Status update!

Here’s what I think our 3 days might look like. (Sorry for putting words in your mouth, Emily!)

3 days of Doors

So maybe I had a little too much fun with my fake door, but I’m hoping that’s just what you and your roommates will do…except with a real door…and your own crazy ideas…that I will then judge…with the help of the supermoms…and hopefully award you $200 to spend at the QBM!!