And the Caption Captain winner is...

"Mary Poppins got a raise!"




Congratulations to reader and umbrellarazzi Rachel who will be receiving a signed copy of THE MANUAL OF DETECTION by fellow umbrellarazzi @JedediahBerry.

Thank you to all who entered and voted - we hope you had as much fun as we did! Back to our regularly scheduled April Showers!

Caption Captain III - Time to Vote

Thank you all for submitting such wonderful captions! Now the real fun begins: voting is open until midnight EST, Wednesday, April 14. One vote per person, so please do enlist your internetworld friends to help launch your caption into prize territory. Remember, our Caption Captain winner will receive a signed copy of The Manual of Detection (starring you know what!) from author Jedediah Berry.

Have fun and good luck to all entrants!

New caption contest. New awesome prize!

If you've been here before, you know the drill. If you're new - listen carefully to the rules: Take a stab at writing the most hilarious, insightful or appropriate caption for one, two or all three of the supplied photos. Leave your caption entry as a comment in the post, and in one week your peers will have the opportunity to vote you Caption Captain III.

Capiche?

Before we reveal this round's three photo candidates, let's reveal the prize. In keeping with our very high prize standards, it's a beaut. Caption Captain III will be the lucky recipient of a PERSONALLY SIGNED copy of The Manual of Detection by the esteemed* Jedediah Berry. Recognize the name? That's right, we snuck in his debut submission earlier this week, sneaksters that we are! It seems that Mr. Berry also shares our interest in rain's hardest working accessory, which is evident right there on page 2 of the Manual.

Enough with the appetite whetting, let's get to the captionless candidates!

Photo 1, courtesy of umbrellarazzi @JHemerka:



Photo 2:



Photo 3, courtesy of Maryland correspondent, Moira:



And there you go - comments are open for your caption-entry candidates! Good luck, have fun, and a very, very special thanks to Mr. Berry for his generous gift. See you back here in a week for the opening of the voting.

*If you're into the whole Young Lions Fiction Award, Strand Critics Award, Dashiell Hammett Prize finalist thing. Which we are.

Caption Contest #2: And the winner is!

Photo 3:
Don't let anyone tell you the Death Panels aren't real. You break ONE RIB, and they put you down - Andrew



AND!

Photo 4:
Fowl! - Andrew



That's right - it was a tie! Thank goodness we dont have to split the hood, and congratulations to Andrew who we hope is using this incredible skill somehow, somewhere. We will be emailing you and @RecyclingZychal so you can coordinate delivery of your gift.

Thanks to EVERYONE who participated in this event - it was a complete blast and wouldn't be possible without your good natures and generosity!

Caption Contest #2: your turn to vote!

We are overwhelmed with the umbrellamunity's enthusiastic response to @RecyclingZychal's generous giveaway.

The captions have been aligned with the appropriate photo - and it's almost time to crown our winner with a unique upcycled umbrella HOOD. Voting is open to all readers, and especially friends of the entrants! So cast your vote and lobby your friends to help you win. One vote per person and the contest will close at midnight, EST on Tuesday, December 1. Go!





















Thank you again so much for playing along, and to @recyclingZychal for offering to host such a wonderful giveaway, just in time for the holiday season. That's the spirit! And speaking of, we're big fans of game environments here at BOS-HQ and may we also point you toward this for either yourself of that special gamer someone on your holiday list. Cheers!

Caption Contest #2

The second Better Off Soaked Giveaway is brought to you by the extremely creative and talented Recycling Zychal who has generously offered to gift a custom-made Upcycled Umbrella Hood to one of you lucky readers. The winner gets to choose a fabric from her Etsy page, the Eco-Fi felt lining and snap enclosure. Your final product will look like this.

Like the last contest, everyone who leaves a caption for one of the umbrella photos posted below is entered, and you may enter once for every photo. However, now with more awesome! Instead of using a random number generator, this time we're going to let you readers (and your friends on Twitter and Facebook!) vote for the winner. Create and leave your captions from now until Midnight, Sunday, November 29th. Then voting for the favorite caption will be held Monday and Tuesday.

Without further ado - the candidates! Create one caption for any or all of the five photos taken by our artist, Taryn Zychal. Indicate in your comment which photo the caption is for. Have fun, and good luck!

PHOTO 1:


PHOTO 2:


PHOTO 3:


PHOTO 4:


PHOTO 5:


Artist's background in her own words:

I started Recycling Zychal on Earth Day of 2009, but the idea of making dog coats from broken umbrellas started about 5 years ago when I bought an umbrella at the salvation army. It was teal and had white whales along the edge, it was really cute, but found out when I got home that it was unrepairable and broken. I couldn't bare to throw it out, and I knew I would eventually think of something to do with it. I tucked it away and a year later got my first pug, Jake. The idea struck me to make him a dog coat from the broken umbrella after a whale print collar had made me remember that I had the fabric. At the time I didn't know how to sew so the original prototype is glued together. I wound up entering it into ReadyMade Magazine's Maguyver Broken Umbrella Challenge and it came in runner up, but I had received so much attention for it, I decided to learn to sew and start the company. I stuck to just custom-fit dog coats for awhile, but I have expanded to the HOOD, which comes from my Polish roots and is a new-school version of the babushka. I also have Man HOODs which will be debuting on the site next week, Kitty Toys that help raise money for a no-kill shelter in Arizona and am launching a few more items before the holidays, all of which are made partly by salvaged broken umbrella fabric and utilize the liquid resistant properties of the material. I think of myself as less of a "crafter" and more of a product designer who just uses umbrella nylon as my medium.

So, in short: Taryn is awesome. And if you need another reason why, she also said that she'll donate $1 to the Morris Animal Refuge in Center City Philadelphia for every broken umbrella donated to her.

Follow her here.
And a very special thanks to @stylestance who connected us by featuring us on her blog on the same day! Heart! Swelling!

Caption contest winner revealed

*Although the commenter field registers 17 comments, the first was deleted by its author, so we are counting only the 16 active comments for the contest.



Thank you all so much for playing along with my little contest - I loved reading all your clever captions, and it's funny to see where your brain went in the photo.

Our lucky winner, from the random number generator, is commenter #2, incrediblemoo. Please drop me an email with your mailing address so I can send you out the beautiful letterpress. And thanks again, gentle readers!

Caption contest!

If you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I recently came into a great many beautiful pieces of letterpress art. Way too many to put in my house, and when I discovered



this gem included in the mix, I knew just what I had to do with it.

Give it away.

As a reward!
(And because I have to believe that hosting a contest is as much fun as winning one! Muahahah. Powaaaaaa.)

This adorable letterpress was created by the very talented Roll and Tumble Press, which has been featured on many of your favorite design blogs.

Your adorable, umbrella'd tightrope walker is scooting across inspirational text that reads: "with each tiny step she thought to herself, anything that you want is yours for the giving but when you hold it all to yourself, or put it back on the shelf, that's not living". Winner, I am picturing it on the wall of your boudoir or office and I must say, it looks perfect.

Now, how to win?

I'm going to make it very easy. Just create a caption for the photo posted below that I took on Girard Avenue last month and leave it in the comments. The contest will be open all week, and end at 5pm EST, Friday, July, 17. And just so the un-captiony readers don't feel left out, I'll use the random number generator to choose the winner.

Good luck gentle readers, have fun, enter early and often, and as always, thank you so much for reading (and contributing to) Better off Soaked.

And here is your canvas. Caption away!