Following on the success of the St. Patrick's Day Icon Contest, we've decided that these community mini-contests are a pretty good idea and want to do more of them.  Our next contest idea was provided by community veteran, WebGizmos, and fleshed out over a good number of emails and conversations.  Now, since this is a WG created and sponsored contest, it should be no surprise to anyone who has been around the community for any amount of time, that it's an ObjectDock one 

This contest is to create the best ObjectDock dock backgrounds you can.  Well, it's not that simple actually, they have to be built to match an existing WindowBlinds skin.  A lot of people who use ObjectDock usually find themselves scrambling to find a theme or background to match their favorite skin of the day, and usually have to settle with something that kind of comes close to matching.  We want to encourage more people to make docks that are designed to go along with more skins.

Now, I know a lot of you out there aren't familiar with how to skin ObjectDock, and to that end, WebGizmos has you covered!  About a week ago he emailed me a beginners tutorial on how to take an existing skin, and using SkinStudio, extract the needed visual elements to create a matching dock background.  You can find that tutorial here.

Of course, what would a contest be without rules, prizes and deadlines?

Prizes:

1. Grand Prize - ObjectDock Plus, and one premium suite of the user's choice
2. 2nd & 3rd Prize - One premium suite of user's choice.
3. Community Choice - 1 Year WinCustomize Subscription

Rules:

1. Deadline: 5pm Eastern Time, Friday May 11th.  You have just shy of 3 weeks to build and submit your docks.
2. Entrants should not already own ObjectDock Plus.  If you do already own it, and still choose to compete, you will receive the premium suite, and the OD+ prize will be awarded to the 2nd place winner (and so on if they also are already OD+ owners).  It is possible to build and test your entries using 100% free tools (ObjectDock  regular is free, and there's a basic version of SkinStudio available as well).
3. You must obtain permission from any skin author whose skin you use in creating your matching dock.  Permission must be included in the upload to WinCustomize.
4. You must provide a link to the matching WindowBlinds skin in the comments section of your upload.
5. After uploading the dock background to WinCustomize, post a link AND PREVIEW IMAGE to the comments section of this post.  Entries without preview images posted will not be considered.
6. Entries will be judged by WinCustomize moderation staff.  The top 3 winners will be determined via voting.  Judging will be based on overall quality, complexity and completeness of a dock background.  The more detailed polished yours is, the better.
7. The Community Choice winner will be selected by public poll on WinCustomize.

That about sums it up... so get to it!  To go along with the contest idea and basic tutorial, the prize of a copy of ObjectDock Plus was donated by WebGizmos.  Thanks to WG for your help in this!

P.S. If you're a skin author and would like to offer your skin up for people to use in creating their matching dock backgrounds, feel free to leave a comment below.