Wanna Know What ELSE You're Racing For?

We continue our profiling of our fabulous Grand Prize donors...

In addition to being race stop no. 3, KB and Friends is donating a $20 gift card to each of our Grand Prize winners.

If you aren't familiar with KB and Friends, now is a great time to check them out. From their site:

"We sell digital scrapbooking kits for use in computer-generated layouts or for printing for paper projects. Kathryn Balint and her designer friends specialize in a wide range of designs, including vintage, retro, whimsical, natural and altered art-style. We are known for our unique embellishments, so if you are a collage lover, this is the place for you."


Katie the Scrapbook Lady is well known throughout the digital world. In addition to her popular blog, she sells her inspiring products at The Digi Shoppe. She has generously donated a $25 gift card to her store to each Grand Prize winner!



Go Digital Scrapbooking is well represented in the race with many of the teams calling their GDS gallery, home. From their website:

If you're new to Digital Scrapbooking or are an avid digi-scrapper, this is the place for you! Our community is the best out there because of the members, designers and moderators that we have!

We offer lots of services to help you learn how to be the best digi-scrapper you can be! Here are just a few of them...

• Freebies
• Tutorials
• Ongoing Challenges with participation freebies to get you to scrap those precious memories
• Unique and High-Quality digital products in our store
• Gallery for you to share your creations with the world and to gain inspiration and ideas from other's layouts
• Professional and High-Quality printing service to print your 12x12 layouts for your albums
• Build friendships by reading and posting in our Forums!

Go Digital Scrapbooking is donating two $25 gift certificates to the winning ADSR team!


And finally, fabulous designer, Michelle Pieters has offered each winner a $10 gift certificate to her Gotta Pixel store. If you're not yet familiar with her work, please take some time to check her out!

Challenge 5

I'm so sorry for the delay in getting this posted. Without further ado, wander on over to Butternugsquash and take a gander at the fabulous challenge Christy has posted for you:

Butternugsquash Challenge

Check out the NDISB Home Page!

If you are new to NDISB, on our home page we feature rotating layouts that have been posted in our gallery. With the race going on, we figured this would be a great way to get some of our racers some extra exposure!

Check out the home page to see if you made it this time around. If not, check back again sometime around Thursday, when we expect to feature even more!

Contact the race host

Every once in a while, we get a comment on a post asking about how to get in touch with us. Theresa's email address for the race is racehost at ndisb dot com. I'll see if maybe we can get a link up in one of the columns - probably the one on the right.

OR... you can always drop a note in the NDISB forum, if you've registered. We check that regularly, often several times per day. If you haven't registered in our forum yet, we'd love to have you!

btw, if you think we're just all about digisrapping, here's a link to our most popular thread, with over 19,000(!) views... Oh my... what can be that interesting?!

Challenge 4 Has Been Spotted

At Plain Digital Wrapper. Check it out, here!!!

Quick Reminder about the Yahoo Group

If you are not a member of the Yahoo Group, where the prize codes were distributed, please, please send me an e-mail at the RaceHost e-mail address. If you post comments in the blog, I have no way of adding you. Even a first name isn't always helpful because many teams registered with only screen names. I need your team name and e-mail address to send you the invitation.

Also, if you ARE a member of the Yahoo Group and didn't get an e-mail, it could be that you are set up to not receive e-mail, are on digest, or for some reason, the message just didn't make its way to your in-box. No worries. You can log into the group at any time and read the messages on line. That's the beauty of Yahoo Groups.

To get to the group, just go to www.groups.yahoo.com. After you log in, you'll see all the groups you are a member of. Mine are sorted in alphabetical order, so you may need to scroll down, but the group name is The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race.

A Few Glitches and Grand Prizes No. 1 and 2

We had a few glitches with the prizes and for that I apologize. Some people were having problems downloading the Pickleberrypop zip files and unzipping them. Since most people were able to download and unzip them without issue, I believe the problem was just too many people trying to download at the same time. If you had problems, try again later.

Also, the NDISB coupon code was set with a limit of 200. In my glorious thought process, I was thinking 200 teams = 200 coupons.... However, anyone with a first grade math class under her belt knows that 200 x 2 = 400. So I've upped the coupon's number of uses accordingly. It should be working just fine again.

We had 198 teams register. Of those, 181 were eligible for the Grand Prize drawing. As of Monday morning, all but five of the eligible teams completed their requirements to move on. So what are the remaining 176 teams playing for? I'll profile the first two prizes in this post and will follow up with more every few days.

Prize No. 1 comes to us from Corel. They are generously donating two copies of Corel PaintShopPro XI and two copies of Corel Snapfire Plus. The retail value of these two prizes is $110 each or $220!

Corel Paint Shop Pro XI
NEW Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI builds on the core values set forth by Paint Shop Pro users themselves: easy-to-use yet powerful tools designed with the photographer in mind. Not only does NEW Paint Shop Pro Photo XI improve on existing features, it also incorporates all-new, one-of-a-kind enhancements including a fully-integrated photo organizer -- giving users a single application that covers their workflow from start to finish.

Filled with one-of-a-kind photo tools sure to please even the most discerning photographer, Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo XI is the ideal choice for people who want extraordinary photos. With a built-in Learning Center to help first time users get started, it's the easiest way to get professional-looking photos - fast!

Corel Snapfire Plus
Snapfire Plus picks up right where Snapfire leaves off, from editing and organizing photos and videos to creating scrapbooks. Share photos and videos using 100s of creative templates or make entertaining Snapfire Shows - the best way to share groups of photos and video clips. There's even one-click photo fixes, retouching tools, effortless organization, and automatic backups of your photo collection, making Snapfire Plus the easiest way to work with digital photos.

Prize No. 2 is generously donated by uber-talented designer Trish Jones. Trish is giving away a $15 gift certificate to her store to each of the grand prize winners.

Trish Jones Designs
Create Dream Inspire
That's the catch cry at TJD and we hope that is what you will find here. We are always looking for ways to improve our site and make it better for you!

A Little About Trish
Creating is one of my passions, I get my inspiration from everyday life, my kids, the world around me and I am fortunate that I live in a place that is vibrant and alive with colour!

As the race continues, we'll profile more of our Race sponsors and the prizes they've so generously donated to our Grand Prize winners.

Welcome to Round 2!!

The first week and first two challenges are behind us and we're on to challenge number three and week 2. All but a handful of teams completed both challenges are are eligible to continue.

The prize codes have been posted to the Yahoo Group. If you completed your challenges and are still not a member of the group, send me an e-mail with your team name and your e-mail address and I'll look into it.

What were those great prizes you were scrapping for? First, this kit from the NDISB design team for completing Challenge 1:

And second, this absolutely stunning kit from the Pickleberrypop designers:

KB and Friends...

Is your friendly host of challenge No. 3. Go check it out now if you haven't already. You can find it by clicking HERE.

Challenging you Down Under Style

It's been Thursday in Australia for quite a while now and they have something waiting for you over at Pickleberrypop. Go check it out by clicking HERE!!!

It's Monday Somewhere...

Well, by now, most everywhere except here and Hawaii...

So, without further ado, here is a link to the first challenge:

Challenge 1

Have fun!

Yahoo Group is Set Up

And all registered racers were sent an invite. Two e-mail addresses came back as undeliverable and a couple were set not to accept invitations to Yahoo Groups. I contacted those two individuals, but the two with the undeliverable addresses I can't do anything about. So, check your spam filters and if you don't get an invite by tonight, send me an e-mail and I'll send you another one.

I'll repost the message in the forums about the coupon code and free alpha download, so be sure to check online after you accept your invite for any messages, even if you're set to receive e-mail in case the message gets posted before you accept your invite.

That's it! Hopefully we've got this part squared away. I'm just glad we're dealing with it now and not after the race starts!

The Bain of My Existence

Also known as that danged mailing list. It isn't working the way I had hoped. So, I'm switching to Yahoo Groups. I will invite everyone who is registered. You will only be sent an invite to the e-mail address you provided as your contact e-mail for the race. If you want to change that e-mail, you'll need to let me know at the RaceHost e-mail address.

I sincerely apologize for this added step. But hopefully, this will be it. And the nice thing is, with the Yahoo Group, I can set it up so only I can send out messages. No clogging up your in-boxes! After I get this set up, you'll only receive three messages a week from me unless something comes up.

Thank you SO much for all your patience!

The "Infamous" Mailing List

As many of you are now aware, I have subscribed you to a mailing list. I was hoping it would be a list that only the list owner could send messages from, but that has turned out not to be the case. However, I need a means to e-mail the entire group and my e-mail client doesn't allow me to send out e-mail to as many people as I need to in order to adequately administer this race.

So, this is a portion of the message I just sent out to the list. Also included were a couple of cool little things from a couple of our sponsors. If you didn't get the message, check your spam filter. If you're not in this group for some reason, but received a confirmation from me that you are registered in the race, it is imperative that you e-mail me ASAP. This is the ONLY way you will receive your prize codes so I need to make sure you're in the group and that you're getting the messages.

----copied text from e-mail----

First and foremost, welcome everyone to the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race!! I'm very excited about Season 2!

Now on to the important business
Please, please, do not send messages through this list. You can e-mail me directly at RaceHost@ndisb.com if you have any questions or need to communicate with me for any reason.

I set up this mailing list to allow me to communicate with the group as a whole. I can't possibly send out 380+ individual e-mails to keep everyone informed and send out prize codes. So I'm begging you to not communicate through this list. If I could restrict it to only allow me to post, I would, but unfortunately, this list service doesn't allow that and I don't have any other easy options through our current host.

There are forums set up at NDISB specifically to allow everyone to chat about the race, show off your blinkies, link to your race blogs, etc. In fact, we hope you use these as we'll be frequenting them and answering any questions. You can also subscribe to threads over there if you are the type of user who likes to get an e-mail notification of new posts. But many racers have contacted me with concerns about the number of messages they're receiving through this group.

Unless something unexpected arises, you can expect to only get three e-mails weekly from me through this list. One on Mondays letting you know about the first challenge, one on Thursdays letting you know about the second challenge and a third one with the prize codes for those teams who qualify. If you fail to meet the deadline and have not pre-arranged with me due to vacation, impending birth, etc. you will be dropped from this list. But you can certainly continue to frequent the blog and forums and continue to complete the challenges for fun.

I will primarily use the blog to keep everyone informed about the race happenings, but the e-mail will be a reminder to everyone to check the blog.

----end copied text----

Please respect your fellow racers and abstain from sending messages through the list! Thanks!

Here's the scoop on the ADSR Mail List

Hi! This is Ernie again.

There have been a few posts already about the ADSR mail list, and the concern about email overload. I can understand that, but not being an ADSR participant I had no idea what you were talking about! Thanks to a post by Bonnie in the forum, I was able to check out the ADSR mail list, and came up with the following conclusions:

1. Theresa subscribed everyone in the race to the list. This is how you will learn of challenge prizes.

2. Subscription is voluntary. You do not need to subscribe to this list. That being said, this is how you will learn of your challenge prizes. So you may want to be subscribed.

3. ANYONE on the list can send email to the entire list. As near as I can tell, this can not be changed. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING THIS MAIL LIST TO SEND EMAIL IF YOUR NAME IS NOT THERESA HERNANDEZ! :)

4. Under the "Subscribing to Amazingdigiracers" section, the last item prior to clicking the "Subscribe" button is this selection:

Would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? No Yes

The default selection is "No". By changing your selection to "Yes" and re-subscribing, you will get one email per day, and this email will be a list of all emails sent during the day. You can then scan the subject lines and look for the "important" emails as opposed to the "I'm ready to party!" emails (for those that missed that little note above).

Hopefully, this will help you manage your influx of ADRS race related emails. The whole idea of the race is to have some fun, not create additional stress! If you wish to unsubscribe, you certainly may, but I would think the more prudent selection might be to go the way of the daily digest. But that's just me.

Theresa is sending out an email that says something like "Important: Please Read", asking participants not to use this mail list. That should be going out soon.

One Hundred and Eighty Eight!

That's the number of teams registered! I've got a few more applications in my in box that I'll process tomorrow because, frankly, I'm wiped. But wow on the response! That is more than twice the number of teams that participated in Season 1!

If you sent me your information earlier today (i.e. before 8:00 PM PDT), you should have received a confirmation from me. If not, please send me an e-mail. There are a couple of teams I couldn't complete the registration process for because I'm missing information. I have requested information from those teams. Please get me that as soon as you can.

I'm in the process now of setting up a mailing list to communicate with all the teams more easily. Expect to see something come through on that mailing list in the next 24 to 48 hours.

That's it for now from Race Central. More later.

If you have questions...

The best way to ask them is via the NDISB Forum.

This will require you to register in the forum, but it will ensure that we see your question. While we try to read all of the comments left in the blog, we don't want to chance missing one and not answering your question!

We are also in the process of placing all questions, along with their answers, in this thread to make things a little easier.

Thanks!

PS: Also, we have no way to answer you directly if you leave a question in the comments section. If you post it in the forum, or pm us directly, we can pm you with a response if it is not a general question.

A few more questions

Here are a few more questions we recieved after our last post:

1. If LOs aren't judged but only to make sure they meet the requirements. What determines the GP winners? The team who posts the last LOs first?

As stated in the rules, the Grand Prize will be awarded in a drawing of all eligible contestants. Basically, it will be something like this. All eligible teams will have their names written down on identically sized pieces of paper. One of our children (likely) will draw a piece of paper out of a plastic sand bucket. (We're all about high tech). This may be digitally video recorded to provide a proper accounting.

2. What time on Mondays and Thursdays will the challenges be up on the site?

As the sponsoring sites putting up the challenges are, literally, around the world, we are leaving it up to the sponsoring sites to determine the timing of the challenge postings. We haven't done the calculations, but even with the world time zones, we expect that you should have at least two and a half days to complete Thursdays challenge. When the next challenge is posted, the site owner will send us an email. We may be sleeping when the email comes in. (Yes, we do have to sleep!) What happened last time, generally, was that as soon as someone found the challenge, a link was posted to it in the Natural Designs in Scrapbooking forum. Any and all are welcome to do that this time as well. If you have not checked out the forum yet, we encourage you to take a look. You do not need to register to read any post, but you do need to register if you wish to post in the forum. Sometimes this happened before the official notification. But official notification of the next sponsoring site, and the next challenge, will be made via this blog each Monday and Thursday at no specific time, due to the reasons stated above.

3. What time on Sunday is the cutoff for registering and posting LO links?

Again, as stated in the ADSR rules, layouts must be posted, and the notification email of the posting, must be received by midnight Sunday, Pacific Daylight Time to be eligible.

Yes... we know, we know... it's been six days...

But sometimes these things can't be avoided.

In fact, this is Ernie, posting on Theresa's behalf.

On Thursday, we experienced a medical emergency within Theresa's family that required our presence at the hospital some over the last several days. Everything has resolved itself now, but it was nevertheless a challenging time for all of us for awhile there. If interested, you may find out more at Theresa's blog.

Now on to matters ADSR!

There has been a flurry of activity these last several days, although much of it is behind the scenes. We have received applications for over 150 teams! And still counting! In fact, if you still need a partner, there are some wonderful folks still looking to partner up, and you can find them here. We are trying to get all of the teams names updated in the column on the left. You may submit a blinkie if you wish, and we'll get it up as soon as we can.

We are still finalizing the Grand Prize, but we can tell you that it is now valued at over $800 per team member in Valuable Prizes! (Yes... capitalized Valuable Prizes. LOL)

Keep in mind, registrations will close tomorrow, per the race rules (posted in the first post of June, and also here.)

We'll do our best to keep you up to date on what's going on, but right now we are just trying to keep our head above water (read: Theresa is doing all the work, while I'm sitting around watching TV and eating bon-bons).

And the first challenge is still scheduled for July 16th.

If you have already communicated with Theresa about any special needs, unless you got a bounce back message, rest assured that it's in her in box, and she'll get to it. As registration is nearing a close, we can't believe how close and exciting the action is.

Watch this space...

Answering a Few Questions

A few people left questions in the comments. I can't answer people directly from Blogger, so I'll post the questions and answers here:

Q) The LO'S, does each team member have to make 1 LO for each challenge or should you make a LO as a team?
A) It depends on the challenge and the site. For most challenges, each team member will complete a single layout. You can coordinate on a theme, tell a story between your two layouts, or just do your own individual things. In some challenges though, you'll collaborate. Full details for each challenge will be posted on the host site.

Q) I've uploaded my blinkie you made for our team, and I have been trying to add it to my siggies, but it won't show up. Am I doing something wrong???
A) That's hard to say without looking at your code. All PHP bulletin boards use the same code. The first thing you need to do is upload the .gif file to a photo hosting site such as PhotoBucket or ImageShack. Then, you edit your signature in the forum and insert the following code:

[img]http://whateveryourfilenameis.gif[/img]

replacing the part between the [img] [/img] tags with the actual URL of your file. If you want your blinkie to link back somewhere, like a blog, use this code:

[URL=http://www.sitename.com][img]http://whateveryourfilenameis.gif[/img][/URL]

replacing the site name and file location with your information.

Q) Is there a race blinkie that we can use????
A) Yes, ever team that registers gets a custom blinkie sent when the registration process is complete. If you sent in your registration and did not receive one, then something happened and you are not registered. Please contact me at the ADSR e-mail.

Q) Can we change our information?
A) Yes. If you change your team name, add a blog, or make a team blinkie, go ahead and send those to me. I'll update the blog. But, if you change your team name, don't expect a new custom official Race blinkie. I'm only making one per team, :-). Also, try to get all changes into me before the race starts on July 16. After that, I can't promise I'll have much time to


edited....
apparently I didn't have time to finish this post! I think what I meant to type was that I won't have much time to make edits to team names, etc. with all the race activities taking place.

Registration is Well Underway!

I've been registering teams like mad. In fact, I register teams in my sleep. We've got close to 80 teams already. If you've submitted an application and have NOT heard back from me yet (11:00 PM PDT) please send me an e-mail because I have contacted everyone I've received an e-mail from.

Contact me at RaceHost@ndisb.com.

A few people have posted questions in the comments section. I'll try to get to those tomorrow. Sadly, Blogger doesn't let me e-mail you, even though you enter your e-mail address. Not sure why that is, but it means I can't respond personally to you, but I will address all open questions in my next blog post. Which I hope will be tomorrow.

Now it's time for bed, so I can register more people in my dreams...