Winners of the Hannah and Paula Skill Challenge

Winners of the Hannah and Paula Skill Challenge
By Judge Linda aka Oz

As most of you may know, this started when Pajalu (Paula) stamped a few images for her friend named Hannah. How could she have known that such a simple act of kindness would result in the "STAMP HEARD ROUND THE WORLD"! Soon millions had gathered to witness the now infamous Hannah vs. Paula battle of skills. Well maybe not millions but a darn lot of us did. Every day for two weeks Hannah and Paula toiled, fussed and fumed over their designs. Not since Michalenglo got stuck with the ceiling has so many onlookers’ oohhhed and awwwed over the results. Ok, again, maybe not but you get the drift.

But there was alot of Hulabaloo going on and I get to try and sort it all out.

You may all recall that the challenge was to use the Nesting Doll stamp from Hero Arts with Hannah’s sketch. In the time frame that was allowed, Hannah submitted 3 cards to Paula’s 2. All 5 entries were true to the nature of the sketch, although I believe Hannah’s second entry was the best interpretation of the original sketch. Therefore I deem Hannah the winner of the sketch portion.
For the coloring part of the challenge, I had a much harder time deciding. While Hannah’s first submission was so attractive with the monochromatic color scheme of rosy pink, both of Paula’s cards seemed to be almost saved by her use of the blue. I felt that the background on Paula’s cards were so very busy that the use of the blue helped to bring the dolls forward. Hannah’s third submission has her coloring every doll with a different color. I usually feel that this distracts from a group, but because they were all dolls, it pulled them back together. Both ladies used nice shading and shadowing techniques and both stayed “within” the lines, I claim this part of the challenge a tie.

Ok, now time for the big tote board in the sky to tell us the current standings. With Hannah winning the sketch part, and a point for the tie in coloring, she now stands at 2 points. Paula has a point for the coloring tie and 1 point for the original gift of sending stamps to Hannah that lead to this whole challenge..Paula also has 2 points.

You know what the means ladies… It’s official…. It’s a TIE….. !!! As I grab one hand on each of these amazing people and raise them in the air, the room goes WILD! Happy happy joy joy dancing is going on across the universe! I can hardly hear myself proclaiming the results of this once-in-a-lifetime event…. (it is only once, right?...ladies?)

Judy has offered up some absolutely marvelous prizes that are in the mail as we speak. I can’t wait to hear from our TIE WINNERS when they receive them. Thank you so very much Judy for your gifts and encouragement during this journey.

Deborah aka Gigi helped judge this wonderful contest of skills and will be submitting her views and results here also.

To Hannah and Paula, Congratulations and I just would like to add my thanks for letting me play along, trusting me to critique and for letting me become a friend to you both. I truly can’t think of a higher honor than that.

Linda K Metteer