Tom Gates: End of The Year!

Chapter 3: Craft Competition

The last bell of the day rings and I hurriedly pack my bag and sort out my books. When I'm done I meet up with Derek in front of his class, and we head to the canteen where the craft competition is held. Derek shows me a picture of his fighter jet inspired torchlight holder. I've decided on making a monster-styled pencil holder that doubles as a stationery box and is outfitted with wheels allowing it to move. Amy, Marcus and Solid have decided to join the competition too.

I set up my stuff next to Derek's workstation.

"Competition is starting in five minutes," announces Mrs. Mumble.

I take the five minutes to discuss what snacks to buy for our upcoming Dogzombies band practice (due to be held on Monday when Derek and I get back from camping).

We've decided on Crunchy Alien snacks (again), caramel wafers and the usual juice.

"Talking about band practice snacks again?" asks Amy who sits down right next to me.

"It's all important stuff," I say. "When you want to be a good band besides practising loads every practice needs to be properly planned in advance."

"So I guess you're practising more now that Mr. Keen wants Dogzombies to play at the end-of-the-year award ceremony."

Derek and I exchange a glance (Huh?!).

"You don't know about it?" asks Amy incredulously. "There's a rumour going around school now."

"I have to admit I don't know," says Derek. "But luckily we're practising almost every week these days."

(It's true. Well, true if you count in the practices we had to do without Norman as he's in a football team and is quite busy sometimes.)

Just then Mr. Keen blows the whistle to start the craft competition and we all start cutting up cardboard, taping and glueing together stuff. I start out by drawing the outline of my monster on a plain white piece of cardboard (easy enough).

Constant cutting, glueing and painting make an hour basically fly by. I'm looking at everyone else's crafts and I'm feeling slightly worried. There's a kid from Mr. Sprocket's class building a really tall model of a skyscraper from toilet rolls and gleaming aluminium foil. Amy's cat-based CD holder is looking really neat while Derek's jet just looks striking, especially considering the fact that he used markers to add black and red accents.

I'm (nearly) done with my monster-styled moving pencil holder and I'm thinking of what I can do to make it look better. Suddenly, I get a genius brainwave.

I borrow Derek's thick black marker and colour the undercarriage (where the wheels and axles are) black and use acrylic paint to give the monster a bright orange profile. I also draw a face on the monster with one slightly larger eye and a rectangular mouth.

(Phew! All done!)

"That looks interesting Tom," comments Amy.

"Thanks," I answer.

"Wait, look at that," says Derek all of a sudden, pointing at the boy from Mr. Sprocket's class.

What he managed to accomplish in one hour and fifteen minutes is impressive. He managed to build a massive skyscraper with striking colours and eye-catching designs. And the skyscraper looks quite neat overall although there are some parts he didn't manage to do up properly before the time was up.

"He's definitely going to win," predicts Amy as Mrs. Worthington, Mr. Fullerman and Mrs. Yodel go from table to table grading and inspecting everyone's crafts.

Mr. Keen is going around saying things like "neat piece of art, Roger" and "impressive designs, Pansy".

As Mr. Fullerman comes over to my table, I'm starting to feel worried. He writes down our scores in his clipboard and summarises everything after inspecting our crafts so we get an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of our crafts.

Amy's CD holder wins in neatness but loses out a little in creativity. Derek's plane scores pretty high on neatness and visual design but loses out in functionality because if it were to be used in real life, the sharp edges make it difficult to be held. Functionality isn't really a problem for me and the interesting use of wheels helped too but unfortunately mine lost out a bit in neatness due to the inconsistent painting on the monster's back (oops).

When the teachers are done grading everyone's crafts, Mr. Keen announces the top ten positions. Marcus gets sixth place, Derek fifth, me fourth, Amy third and the kid from Mr. Sprocket's class (obviously) first. The real shock is finding out that the first place prize is a multipurpose box-cutter and a nice pack of pens. At least being in fourth place has allowed me to win a small sketchbook (useful) and a pencil.

When we're walking home, Derek reminds me to include some of my drawing pens and comics when I'm packing (it's all very important stuff).