And the winner is...

So we've all cast our votes and the results are in! We had an astounding 417 votes this time...thanks to everyone who promoted this vote and everyone who took the time to stop by and cast a vote! The winner for February's Flickr Vote is Ald.Valdez for "Laugh". Congratulations!! Please email me with your mailing information at info@lotuspaperie.com so I can get your prize in the mail.

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On a side note, I wanted to draw attention to an anonymous comment that we received regarding the voting process. We were accused of cheating in the vote. It is impossible for us to "fix" the vote and we want to assure everyone that our voting system is handled as fairly as possible. Having said that, I also want to point out that we completely encourage our finalists to promote each month's vote wherever they want that might generate more votes for the finalists' layouts- forums, chat groups, whatever. The reason we are okay with this is two-fold...it's gonna happen anyway (there's no way for us to monitor it so it's a wasted effort to make it against the "rules") and the whole point is for more people (scrappers and non-scrappers alike) to visit this blog. We don't want to restrict how you all participate because that sucks the fun out of the whole thing. We also understand that not all our finalists are active on forums & chat groups. But that's okay because the people who are arriving here as a result of links being posted elsewhere on the web make their decision based on the three finalists. We can't force anyone to vote one way or another...seems fair enough. Look at it this way, the more people we get to look at the layouts in the finals, the more chances each one of those three artists has of being voted the winner.

If anyone has concerns with how we're handling this issue, I welcome your emails.

and of course, a big giant shout out to the all our contributors for February. Make sure to upload your work for the March vote and remember to tag your layouts!