Ashley's Winning Door Decoration

Well folks, I have a return guest blogger for you. My friend, Ashley, did a previous post for you all on Door Decorating Tips. Turns out, she was the perfect person to write that post because she won this year, and I couldn't be happier for her. I asked her to do a follow up post and she graciously agreed. As a reminder, she is a Howie girl from New Jersey. She has her own fantastic blog called Confessions of a Giggler and did a great review on BSB Cruise 2011. My favorite part of which was her comparing the fans' reaction of Kevin's appearance at the concert to an episode of Oprah's Favorite Things. I thought that was hilarious because I couldn't agree more. So anyway, don't forget to check out her 2011 cruise review:
Ashley's Cruise Review Day 1
Ashley's Cruise Review Day 2
Ashley's Cruise Review Day 3

Omg I’m back again! (sorry, I had to do it…haha!) You may or may not remember my previous guest spot. My topic was door decorating tips. Turns out I know what I’m talking about. You are now talking to the BSB Cruise 2011 Door Decorating Champion!!! Woo hoo!!!! So it only seems fitting that I would provide you with a follow up to my last entry. I guess I’ll take you through everything that goes along with winning the grand prize!

The Idea
First it took a lot of hard work. Don’t expect to throw something together willy nilly and get a win. I worked on mine for a few months. Some days I worked on pieces while watching tv and other days I sat in my dinning room (which doubles as my craft room) for hours on end. If I wasn’t working on a project, I was thinking about it. I was constantly coming up with ways to turn my 2d sketch into a 3d door.

That brings me to my next point. Having some sort of 3d element is important. All of the doors that were mentions this year and last year had something popping out. Making something 3d may sound daunting but I promise that it really isn’t that hard. All you need is a little glue and maybe some tape. To make my 3d movie reel all I used was 2 pieces of cardboard and a cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper.  After I cut the pieces, I painted everything silver and then glued them together. See not that hard, right? We had lots of 3d elements on our door. We had a tub of popcorn (complete with fake popcorn), movie reel, 3d movie tickets, film strip, and soda cups.

Getting it to Miami
When it came time packing it all up and bringing it to Miami, we were able to get most of it into a few uggs shoe boxes. We chose the uggs box because the boxes are bigger and they are sturdier than a regular shoe box.  We then packed the boxes in a duffle bag and carried it on the plane with us. This worked out well because we insured that nothing got messed up in our travels.

Bringing the Door to Life

The next task was actually putting everything on the door. First we covered the door with masking tape. This is my tape of choice because it is sturdy enough to hold up even the heavier pieces but it also comes off easily when you need to take everything down. We then used solid red wrapping paper to cover the door. I like to do this because it ties the whole door together and makes it look neater as a whole. I recommend for everyone to put some sort of background paper up. I got mine from thepapersource.com. The have lots of colors and it’s only $5 per roll (plus shipping). I think it’s totally worth it. Next we just used masking tape to put everything up on top of our red background. This part takes a long time. So much so, that we missed about 5 minutes of the sail away party. Of course you don’t have to miss anything; we just wanted to get it done so we wouldn’t have to worry about it later.

After you have your door up and ready to go all that’s left to do is wait…and wait. Rumor had it that they were going to announce the winners at Prom Night. The whole night went by and there was no door decorating announcement. We went to sleep that night hopeful that something would be said the next day but we were not expecting what happened.

The Win
At about 9 am there was a knock on our door. I made my sister get up to answer it. My mind was racing trying to figure out who it was. I really thought it was going to be laura or one of our other friends telling us that we were late for meet and great. I was wrong. When my sister opened the door there was a woman from rose tours there. The following exchange happened:

Rose Tours: Are you ashley and cortney?
Cortney: Yes
RT: I wanted to let you know that you are the winners of this year’s door decorating contest
C: are you serious???
RT: Yeah, you guys worked really hard on it.

At this point I popped out of bed (and if you know anything about me, you know that popping out of bed is not an easy task…haha!!). I was so excited; I didn’t know what to do with myself. I gave the rose tours girl a hug and said thank you about a million times. She gave us each a letter and told us our prize for winning was front row seats to the concert that night. My sister and I could not believe that she was telling us that we won.

We were not expecting it at all. Due to planning our sister’s wedding (that took place the week after) we didn’t have as much time to dedicate to our door this yeah as we had last year. So we reused last year’s decorations but we added a few new elements to it. Since we didn’t win last year we really didn’t think we would win this year. That’s why this was extra surprising to us, we went in to it not expecting anything we just wanted to have something on our door and then we won!! After we heard the news I wanted to tell every person I know. Thanks to being in the middle of the ocean that couldn’t happen. So I called all of my friends who were on board!!!

We couldn’t go back to sleep after hearing this news so we tried eating breakfast. That didn’t really happen either. I kinda just looked at my plate. I couldn’t eat anything. Then, the tears came. I have been a fan since I was 12 and this was only the second time I’ve cried because of them.  I couldn’t control it. I worked so hard on making this door perfect and for it to get recognition from the backstreet boys themselves is huge. The fact that they saw my door and picked it as their favorite one out of all the other doors means more to me than anything. I can’t even explain how amazing this feeling is. All of my hard work paid off.

That night we got to sit in the front row at the group a concert. We were in group b so this meant that we were the only fans who got to see the concert both nights (except for a handful of people who snuck in). It was very special to be given the opportunity to see a once in a life time concert twice! Since we were in the front row my sister was able to grab howie’s attention and ask him to pick her for helpless when she smiles. So he did!!! That was really amazing too!!! She told him that we were the door dec winners and he said that our door was really good!! WOW is really all I have to say about that.

Well, that’s my story. If anyone has any questions comments or concerns please share them below. I will be happy to reply to anything you have to say!! Also don’t be afraid to check out the video my sis and I made right before we took the door down and packed it up. My sister is the one you see, but I talk some and laugh a lot on it. Enjoy!