Inside secrets

Inside secrets to entering your plastic canvas projects in local, county and state crafts competitions, and bringing home the blue ribbon every time!



Secret #1: If you want a sure-fire way to impress the judges, use embellishments to add your own special creative touches to patterns!

The judges absolutely love it when you think outside the box by adding embellishments to spice up your plastic canvas projects!

There are many types of embellishments that can make your plastic canvas project sparkle with uniqueness and creativity. You can use beads, buttons, craft cord, doll-head ornaments, Christmas ornaments, embroidery floss, flags, fabric, flowers, foam letters, glitter, lace, metallic wrapping paper, patches, plastic canvas shapes, raffia, rhinestones, ribbon, sequins and stars. Your choices are almost endless.

Let’s say you make a plastic canvas vase with a Fourth of July patriotic theme. What could you do to jazz-up a project like that, with embellishments?

With a regular plastic canvas vase designed for household decor, you’d probably buy some brightly colored plastic flowers with long stems at your local crafts shop, then cut a piece of Styrofoam to fit snugly into the vase, and stick the stems of the flowers into the Styrofoam so your vase becomes a warm floral centerpiece for a coffee table or mantle. That’s a nice embellishment. But it’s pretty standard fare.

So for your Fourth of July theme project, you’re going to get a little bit more creative. For example, instead of flowers, you might consider creating a burst of patriotic colors coming from up out of the vase, like fireworks.

To do this, you need to visit your local crafts store and get some patriotic-themed embellishments. For example, in most well-stocked craft stores you can frequently find small American flags on long wooden stems. I’ve also seen colorful red, white and blue stars attached by small threads to similar long wooden stems that can be poked into the Styrofoam base of your vase. There are any numberof colorful patriotic-themed embellishments you can use in place of flowers to create a “fireworks”-like effect coming up out of the vase.

Once you have these items, all you have to do is fit your Styrofoam into the vase as usual, and arrange the items strategically by sticking the long wooden stems down into the Styrofoam, just as you would do if you were using long-stemmed plastic flowers.

You can even make some embellishments of your own for a project like this. Simply get some toothpicks to use as “stems.” And get some red, white and blue metallic foil available at any crafts store. Just cut the foil into 4” x 4” squares. Take one foil square and one toothpick, and carefully roll the foil square into a funnel shape so that the closed end of the funnel fits tightly around one end of the toothpick. Attach the closed end of the “funnel” to the toothpick end with a drop of glue. Then stick the other end of the toothpick into the Styrofoam base so that the brightly colored funnel sticks up out of the vase. Make five or six of these brightly colored red-white-and-blue foil embellishments and arrange them strategically in the vase. This helps create your Fourth of July fireworks “burst” effect.

The bottom line is that judges absolutely love it when you put this kind of effort and creativity into a project!

Secret #2: Use “modeling” to come up with your own unique designs!

The judges have been doing their jobs for many years and have seen perhaps thousands of projects with thousands of designs, often the same basic ones over and over again. So you can bet it’s a true pleasure for them when someone enters a project with design they’ve never seen done on plastic canvas.

To come up with your own designs, look with a discerning eye at the designs in common items such as clothing, table cloths, carpeting, floor tiles, wall paper, bed spreads and other objects with designs in them, so that literally every time you step outside of your home for travel or shopping you come back with fabulous new ideas for designs.

If you travel and stay at hotels from time to time look at the designs in everything: the wallpaper in your hotel room, the carpeting, rugs, bedspreads, curtains and even floor tiles. The idea is to use your imagination to modify and incorporate these designs into your plastic canvas patterns. This is called “modeling.” For example, you can look at a zigzag design on a blouse you found at Sears, modify that design slightly, and incorporate it into a plastic canvas project or pattern you are working on.

Just a short while back, I created a whole new set of original plastic canvas crafts projects - including a vase, tissue box, photo box, and picture frame - simply by looking at the designs in a new throw rug in my daughter's living room during a visit to her home! I’ve also found great ideas for plastic canvas pattern designs simply by going to the local library and looking through books about artwork, home decor and even books about other types of crafts. I’ve even found cool designs on the labels of bottled products in my kitchen or bathroom, and modified them to fit plastic canvas projects I was working on. Because there are designs in just about everything, the possibilities of coming up with new designs for your plastic canvas projects are endless. All you have to do is use your imagination to modify the design just enough to fit whatever plastic canvas project you are working on.

Secret #3: Always read the judges’ comments on your entered items, and learn from what they say!


One of the best ways to start winning is to learn from the judges’ scoring comments on your entries after the competition is over.

In most competitions, entries are scored on a numerical basis, and the higher your numerical score the closer you come to winning the blue ribbon.

Fortunately, in many competitions the judges briefly explain why they gave you the score they did. If you received a good score, the judge might briefly congratulate you and tell you what he or she liked best about your entry. And if you received a low score, the judge might offer some constructive criticism

So depending upon your entries, you might have comments from the judges that run from congratulations like “I really loved the way you double-stitched the corners so the plastic doesn’t show”) to constructive criticism like “Those frayed edges really cost you some points on this one…sorry!”

If you will take their congratulations and their constructive criticisms to heart, and learn from them, you will know what to do next time to make your entries even better. I promise you, if you do this, it will not be long before you are bringing home the blue ribbon every time!

Best regards from your plastic canvas coach,


Kathy Barwick
Plastic Canvas Crafts Secrets