The Festive Card Competition: Start designing!

What is the Purple Mash Festive Card Competition?

Every year, we ask children to submit their own designs about what this time of year means to them, using the Purple Mash paint tool 2Paint a Picture.

The competition is going from strength to strength and last year we received almost 2000 entries from the South Africa alone! Can you help us get even more this year? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by submitting your own design to us between 9am Monday 27th October and 5pm on Friday 17th of November.

What can be won in the Festive Card Competition?

We've got prizes so fabulous that even the Grinch himself would crack a smile. We’ll choose our favourite design from each age group as a winner, plus a winner from the school staff category.

All winning children will receive:

• 5 printed copies of their card
• A R300 Takealot voucher

The winning staff member will receive:

• 5 printed copies of their card
• A R350 Takealot voucher
• some 2Simple Merch

How it works

Participating in this holly jolly competition is as easy as icing a gingerbread biscuit! It's open to all primary school children as well as school members of staff. All they need to enter is a flair for design and a Purple Mash account.

To enter, children and staff simply design their own festive card using Purple Mash tool 2Paint a Picture and submit it to the digital Display Board for their age category. Entrants can begin their designs whenever they choose, but Display Boards will only be open for submissions from 3rd-21st November.

At the end of the competition, our favourite design from each category wins. It’s 2Simple!

There are four age categories:

There are four categories for entry:

• Grade R & 1.
• Grade 2 & 3.
• Grade 4 & 5.
• Grade 6 & 7

There will also be a 'School Staff' category for members of staff to submit their designs.

2Paint a Picture features 17 distinct art tools, each allowing children to explore different techniques and styles, providing almost endless possibilities for festive card designs.

This year, we're hosting a special Live Lesson where children will learn more about 2Paint a Picture and get inspiration for their card designs.

When to submit entries

Although entrants can start designing their cards now, the competition is not open until 27th Octoberand will run until 5pm on Friday 17th November.

This allows us time to get all prizes delivered to the winning pupils before the December holidays begin in the UK. However, as a global competition, any pupil worldwide has the chance to share with us what the festive season means to them.

How to enter

The Festive Card Competition section of Purple Mash is where you'll find all the information you need, including a competition overview with the small details, terms and conditions, and other pieces of information that don’t make a very interesting blog post! This section will be updated with all the information for this year's competition soon.

We find that setting the competition as a 2Do for children to complete works well. Once children or staff have completed their design, they just need to click share and select the festive card Display Board for their age group. It’s as simple as that.

A little inspiration

Need some inspiration to get those festive creative juices flowing? Take a look at the winning entries from last year.

Important Information

• The competition is open from the 3rd-21st of November 2025. Entrants can start designing before this date, but Display Boards will not be open for submissions until 3rd November.
• Entries submitted after 5 pm GMT 21st November will not be entered into the competition.
• Judging will commence on 24th November.
• Winners will be announced shortly after the judging.
• The judges' decision is final and we will have 1 overall winner, plus 3 runners up, in each category.
• Winners and runners up will be contacted as soon as possible after the judging has been completed.