47 Online Ongoing T-Shirt Contests

There are now tons of websites holding design contests as a way of sourcing designs for t-shirts and this is probably the most comprehensive list you are going to find. So if you are creating some awesome designs you now know tons of places you can submit to.

1. Threadless
   Of course Threadless would have to be at the top of this list as it is often credited as being the first to use this business model. It is also the biggest and probably the most successful of all the t-shirt contest sites.

   Prizes
   $2000 Cash
   $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash)
   $500 in cash each time your design is reprinted
   Up to $22,500 more if you win a “Bestee” in the Threadless Awards
   Alumni Club membership including a Medal of Honor and other goodies

   How often?
   Weekly.

2. Design by Humans
   At just about 2 years old Design by Humans is one of the most talked about tee contest sites and is famous for its large prints.

   Prizes
   Shirt of the Day: $500 cash plus $250 store credit
   Combined with Shirt of the Week/Month and the Rock Star program you could earn up to $8500

   How often?
   Almost daily.

3. Uneetee

   Prizes
   $1500

   How often?
   Weekly

4. laFraise
   Probably the largest t-shirt contest site in Europe. Owned by Spreadshirt they have a lot of resources. Specialize in cartoonish designs. Multilingual web site (German, French and English).

   Prizes
   €1,000

   How often?
   Almost daily.

5. Look- Zippy
   France based site I believe, multilingual (English, German, French and Spanish) and specialize in fair trade organic garments.

   Prize: €300 for 200 shirts, €75 for every 50 more printed
   How often? Monthly

6. Springleap
   South African based contest. Don’t expect to get paid soon. It is about one and a half years since I got runners up there and still haven’t seen a dollar which is probably about all I earned as the runners up prizes were probably the worst prizes ever for a tee contest. A few days ago I received an email saying that they are finally going to pay the winners but I’ll believe it when I see it. My advice: avoid this contest.

   Prize: About $900
   How often? Bi-weekly.

7. Red is White
   The premier Christian tee design contest site.

   Prize: $500 plus royalties after first 250 shirts
   How often? Perhaps monthly.

8. Bang Bang T-Shirts
   British contest site that focuses on pop culture.

   Prize: £100 – £125
   How often? Occasionally.

9. Edo Label

   Japanese contest site with bilingual site (English and Japanese).

   Prize: 50,000 yen + 10,000 yen  store credit.

10. Code Creations
    Organic apparel for you, your baby and your dog.

    Prize: Varies but mainly based on sales.
    How often? Monthly.

11. Shirt.Woot
    They have a Derby (contest) regularly as well as accepting submissions for their daily tee. Famous for $10 t-shirt deals.

    Prize: From $500 (I think)
    How often? Weekly (perhaps)

12. Scribtee
    It’s connected to the ShirtCity POD.

    Prize: $300-$500 plus $50 shopping voucher
    How often? Twice a month.

13. teetonic.com
    British site.  I haven’t notice much activity around here in a while.

    Prize: £100 plus 50p per shirt sold.
    How often? Rarely, if ever.

14. Allmightys
    One of the first contests where the prizes were based on sales.

    Prize: $2 per shirt sold.
    How often? Occasionally.

15. Cameesa
    This site added crowdfunding to crowdsourcing to build what should be a risk free contest site. They don’t print the tees until they are paid for.

    Prize: $200 cash, $50 credit plus $2 per shirt after the first 125 sold.

16. Ink Fruit
    India based site.

    Prize: 5000 rupees (about $100)
    How often? Every 15 days.

17. Monsieur Poulet
    Based in Paris, France, this is a bilingual site in French and English that uses fair trade cotton garments.

    Prize: €2 per shirt sold
    How often? Several times a month.

18. Fair and Bare
    British based site also using Fair Trade cotton.

    Prize: £200 plus residuals
    How often? Occasionally

19. Chimpogo
    British based contest site.

    Prize: £500
    How often? It says every week but I don’t think that is happening. Maybe occasionally.

20. Canvas
    Contest for Christian based designs.

    Prize: Up to $400

21. Ink Hound
    Design hats and t-shirts.

    Prize: $2 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

22. Teextile
    Fairly new site that sells t-shirts for one week only.

    Prize: $4 per shirt for first 500, decreases after that for some reason.
    How often? Weekly.

23. Full Metal T-Shirt
    This site is wild. Like a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and bikers if you could imaging such a thing.

    Prize: $100 cash, $100 credit plus $5 per shirt (or print) sold for one year.
    How often? Weekly.

24. Teepay
    British site imilar to Cameesa in that the tees won’t be printed unless enough people order them.

    Prize: £2.50 per shirt sold.

25. Tilteed
    Another new kid on the scene.

    Prize: $500
    How often? Weekly.

26. Goodjoe
    Looking for designs that inspire.

    Prize: $1 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

27. Scopial
    Another India based site that attracts a lot of great designers.

    Prize: About $400
    How often? Don’t know.

28. bookis.org
    Similar again to Cameesa. This time though the designer can set the profit he wishes to make per shirt. Based on the Chinese idea of “tuangou” where a group of people get together to buy in bulk from the wholesaler.
29. Metal Ink
    Tatoo inspired designs for tees.

    Prize: $700 cash + $300 store credit + residuals

30. ArtyTee
    Not too sure about this one. Seems to be some type of subscription based store.

    Prize: $2 per shirt (up to $100)
    How often? Monthly

31. SwishSwosh
    New site from the UK.

    Prize: £1100 + 50p per shirt sold for first place, £101 + 50p per shirt sold for runners up
    How often? Monthly.

32. Syckfits
    Another new contest site by the looks of it.

    Prize: $500
    How often? Monthly

33. Badashell

    Prize: $200 + $50 store credit
    How often? On a break.

34. nomoretees
    This is another site in the same vein as Cameesa. If enough people preorder it will be printed. Nomoretees is no more.
    
35. Camiseteria
    Brazil based website in Portuguese.

    Prize: R$800 in cash, R$800 in store credit

36. BlackEyedT.com
    Don’t know how trustworthy this site is. The fact that it is full of comment spam makes me think that it isn’t being maintained. Last update to their blog was in October and that was a cry for help. The tees are not the best designs I have seen so I am not all that surprised they are struggling.

    Prize: $500 cash + $100 store credit

37. Is This Chicken?
    Netherlands based contest wins prize for most creative name.

    Prize: Don’t know.

38. Collar Free

    Two guys got together to set up this contest site that favored graphic tees. Didn’t go so well and they tried to branch out into another business but it looks like they are coming back.

    Prize: Looks like it will be on a per shirt basis.
    How often? No idea.

39. itself
    Turkey based tee contest burst onto the scene about two years ago with a $4000 prize. Selected just a few tees and then no activity. While they appear to be accepting designs and if you dig around you can find a voting area I suspect there is no longer a contest. The last submission was in July. The last tee was chosen about a year ago.
40. Wooshka
    Australian based site. No recent activity. I imagine it will just disappear one day.
41. Milk Shop Gang
    Australian site with interesting site design. I have never seen any activity on this site.
42. Righteous Enterprise
    Disappeared
43. ice cream t-shirts
    Say they’ll be right back but they’ve been saying that for a bit.
44. Tasty Threads
    Never made it out of the gate.
45. Teeple
    Japanese t-shirt contest. Shut down recently.
46. tFuse
    Had a short run and then seemed to disappear. It is now a “Reported Attack Site”.
47. Caponocca
    So little activity on this site too I am going to assume it has gone under.

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Note: These are all just websites that I have come across over the last while or so. I didn’t search the web for t-shirt contests so I am sure there are some that I have missed. On top of that I am sure I have made some mistakes in the details. These things happen.

If you know of any other t-shirt contest sites or can see some mistakes I have made please leave a comment below and I will do my best to rectify the situation.

7 Places to get t-shirts for $10 or less

Here is a list of t-shirt stores for t-shirt addicts on a budget. There is an abundance of t-shirt stores on the web but not all that many where you can get quality tees for $10 or less. Here is The T-Shirt Review’s list of the Top 7 places to get a bargain t-shirt. If you know of others please feel free to add your link in the comments.

1. Ten Bills – A cool selection of urban style tees. All t-shirts are usually $10, hence the name, but you can get them for even less during sales and they often have some other great deals. Flat rate shipping of $5 means you should add lots of tees to your cart at one time.

2. shirt.woot – $10 including shipping means that shirt.woot is the best deal on the web. One shirt per day means no selection if you are an impatient SOB but if you check back every day you will surely find something you like. Usually funny geek designs.

3. TeeFury - Priced at $9 + $2 shipping makes TeeFury one of the best deals out there. T-Shirts styles vary but recently have had quite a few pop culture t-shirts.

4. Uneetee - Each day a different t-shirt is on sale for $10. It’s called the Insaneetee. Shipping at $3.92 is a bargain too. If you have a favorite tee on Uneetee, and you are a bit of a tightwad, you can just wait for it to come up as an Insaneetee deal. They also have an occasional mystery shirt for $6. Don’t know much about it. It’s quite the mystery.

5. Six Dollar Shirts – Shirts are sure cheap but $6.90 for shipping bumps the total price up to $11.90. Still a pretty good deal though. 10 tees for $50 and $17.21 for shipping is a much better deal though and you could even give some of the tees to your friends. Big selection of tees to choose from too.

6. Threadpit – Random t-shirt for only $3.95 + $5.95 shipping is pretty damn cheap but you are basically going to get a shirt that they couldn’t sell. Cheap though.

7. Design by Humans – Serendipitee is the DBH mystery shirt but they claim it it not just crap that they can’t move. Considering the tees are usually about $25, these $10 tees are quite a good deal. DBH is known for it’s large and all over prints. $2.72 shipping + tax to some parts of the US.

Review: Uneetee and Jimiyo T-Shirt

No that long ago I got my first Jimiyo t-shirt from Uneetee. Jimiyo’s t-shirts are in general very detailed and they have an almost religious vibe to them. I really appreciate his talent but usually I wouldn’t want to wear one of his shirts. This shirt from Uneetee on the other hand I like. It stands our from his other tees in that it looks like rock and roll or perhaps biker chic. I am neither rock ‘n’ roll nor biker but I have liked this tee from the first time I saw it and now that I have my hands on it I am not disappointed. In fact looking at it close up you can appreciate it even more. Great tee, great designer.

This order from Uneetee came off without a hitch. I was a bit relieved as I had trouble ordering from them before but not this time.

Penrose Triangle T-Shirts

The Penrose Triangle was named after mathematician Roger Penrose. I had probably seen the triangle a few times before but I certainly have seen plenty of Escher’s art in which this shape was popularized. This is a t-shirt blog rather than an art or math blog so I am of course going to talk about shirts. These shirts caught my attention a while back because they are all based on the Penrose Triangle. I had bookmarked them quite a while ago for mention but the recent submission of Trippy at Uneetee made me stop procrastinating. This design is the only one of the three designs in this post not yet available as a t-shirt. I imagine it is only a matter of time though.

I had seen this design when it was submitted to Threadless but it apparently wasn’t accepted there and the artist (kaloyster on Threadless) has now submitted it to Uneetee.

It seems that Threadless is not all that interested in the Penrose Triangle because another version of the Penrose Triangle by popular t-shirt designer, Tom Burns, called the Penrose Baby, was also not accepted. Perhaps it was because of the baby’s hairstyle which caused a minor controversy in the Threadless forums. Heeding the hairstyle advice of people in the forums, the baby was given a new do and submitted to Design by Humans.

Unfortunately the new hairstyle wasn’t enough to get a win at Design by Humans either though. But for those of you who want to get their hands on one of these tees don’t worry. It is available at Loiter.

Last but certainly not least is Puzzled Putter by Glenn Jones which is my favorite of the three but doesn’t have quite the back story of the others. At least not that I know of. It is available on Glenn Jones own t-shirt store, which is called Glennz, and is currently on sale at only $13.95. Actually all tee are $13.95  from December 26-31st.

12 Days of Christmas at Uneetee

Uneetee are having sales everyday for the next 12 days but you will have to keep checking back to find out what they are. At the moment they are selling 5 different shirts for just $10 each. That’s a pretty good deal. Of course they always have one t-shirt on sale for $10, they call it the Insaneetee. They aren’t making it very easy for you to find the t-shirts on sale either but if you really want one of these bargain tees you will find them.

T-Shirt Sales Roundup

I have been notified of a couple or quadrillion sales that I thought you might want to know about so here is a list of some of them below. Don’t forget that for POD shops like Zazzle, Cafepress and Spreadshirt you can check the respective forums in The T-Shirt Review. I have also recentle added a T-Shirt Coupon page above so you can check there too. You can’t say I don’t help you get t-shirt bargains. (If you have a t-shirt store and would like to offer The T-Shirt Review readers some coupons please feel free to contact me or leave a comment on the Coupon page and I will add it.)

Anyway let’s get down to business. First up is Busted Tees selling all tee or $15 until midnight tonight (12th) so don’t waste any time.

EDUN LIVE: Blank t-shirts that help create jobs in Africa.

Uneetee Review contd.

Some of you may remember a Uneetee review back in June and that I decided to return one of the tees because it was difficult to make out the design on the actual t-shirt. I thought the return policy was little unfair so I asked Uneetee about it and they kindly allowed me to ship it back without insurance or paying for the shipping back to Japan. To be honest, if I had to pay for those things it wouldn’t have been worth it to exchange the t-shirt. Well, I finally received the replacement t-shirt on September 8th. I know. That is a long time to wait for a t-shirt considering I first made the order on June 1st. A part of the delay is due to me trying to decide what to do. The real problems came later though. I sent the t-shirt to Uneetee and I didn’t hear anything back so after a few weeks I contacted them to see what had happened and they told me that they hadn’t received the t-shirt. I started to see the advantage of getting insurance. Luckily they said they would check again but they couldn’t find the t-shirt I had sent. They said that it was OK though and they promised to send me another t-shirt. I thought that was fair but no tee arrived over here either. So after a few weeks I contacted them again about this issue and I guess they checked again and kindly offered to send another one and an extra mystery tee as an apology. These two tees I did get. Thanks Uneetee.

Now for the review. The replacement t-shirt for Paradise was a little number called King Leo and boy is it a beautiful shirt. My wife was really pleased with it. The design is amazingly detailed and the color of the shirt is perfect. There is not one bad thing about it that I can say. If you want a copy you should get over to Uneetee soon as they appear to be selling out.

The second mystery t-shirt was less impressive. To be honest I didn’t really like it when I first got it but it quickly grew on me and it has become my t-shirt of choice at the moment. I didn’t even get what the design was about at first but after studying it closely I realized it is Icarus falling from the sky. I couldn’t see it over on Uneetee’s site so even if you want one I guess you may be out of luck.

Both t-shirts are American Apparel so I can’t really complain there but to be honest I think that AA are a little long for my taste and as my wife is extra slim she could really wear a smaller size than S but what can you do.

Draco Wins at itself

I had noticed the two designs by Draco at itself and I was pretty impressed. In fact I was the first person to post a comment on the two pieces so I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw that his Pandora’s Box design was selected as the third winner at design contest itself. It is a very pretty design printed on a green t-shirt. I am sure it will be more popular with girls than boys though the manga styling will surely get the geek attention.

He wins $1,750 cash and $250 in store credit with the possibility of doubling that if it is reprinted. The prizes and itself are pretty sweet.

After this win I decided to check up on Draco and I discovered that he is an old hand at these t-shirt design contest and that he is a prolific artist racking up wins all over the place including industry leader Threadless, new powerhouse Design by Humans and his Camiseteria from his native Brazil. Below are a selection of my favorites.

This first one is called Good Seed and not only is it a cool t-shirt it is for a good cause. Good to know that Draco is not all about the dollar. Check out the Common Threadz homepage for more information.

Magic is a very funny image and typical of the humor that can be seen over at Threadless but this is available at Pampling.com which I guess is a Brazilian site. You can use Google translate to help you get your shirt though. It would indeed be a great magic trick for a rabbit to pull a magician out of a hat.

This kitten bondage design is hilarious and I don’t know what the caption is. I can guess though. It’s available at European design contest site La Fraise.

The Legendary Smell of Flowers… is available at Design by Humans and I like the fact that the design doesn’t take up most of the t-shirt. The design is awesome too although I am not too sure what the message is. Here in Japan though where hayfever is such a big problem I can almost see this happening in the future. As of writing though it appears to only be available in XL and XXL.

Warning Fisherbot! is available at 2 Many T-Shirts which may also be a Brazilian site. Back to Google Translate. I like this one because of the retro modern feel. What’s with the oxymoron you may ask? Well, it reminds me of the future vision as seen in Bladerunner. You dig?

Beat Up Angel is a great piece that I have seen before. You can find it at Uneetee. The t-shirt speaks for itself.

This next one is actually sold out so if you want to get your hands on one go over to Threadless and request a reprint and hope for the best. It does happen.

Chimp is a very cool and funny design and one of my favorites. No matter what he is attempting to do we are dealing with one smart chimp here. The question is how smart?

The final one I chose is quite different in style from the others and I chose it really to show Draco’s range. I also like the muted colors of this design. It is also available at Camiseteria.

You can find more information about Draco, his t-shirts and his art on his website.

Uneetee T-Shirt Review

We ordered two shirts from Uneetee a while back (June 1st) and it took about 10 days to arrive in Japan. No complaints there. It arrived in a plain white plastic envelope with no branding. The t-shirts were folded tightly but neatly.

Both t-shirts are American Apparel and you should all know by now that they produce good quality t-shirts produced with sweat-shop free labor. I chose the green Foster Family t-shirts and my equally good half chose the navy Paradise t-shirt. I love my shirt. It looks even better in reality than it does on my screen. I’ll be wearing it for years to come as long as I don’t put on any more weight.

Unfortunately we are less than pleased with the Paradise shirt. We do take some of the blame as the design looks dark on our screens but we didn’t imagine that it would be so dark that it would be difficult to make out what was going on in the picture. Below you can see what I am talking about. In the photo with the model it is very difficult to see the image details while in the design image you can see lots happening. Unfortunately, even with the actual t-shirt, you almost have to squint to see what’s happening on the t-shirt. The only thing you can really see is the moon.

So, we decided it would be better to try exchange it than to keep another unworn t-shirt in the closet. Checking out Uneetee’s returns policy though I was a bit surprised. It seems that to exchange the t-shirt we would not only have to pay to return it but also pay to have them ship us another. They also recommend insuring it. We got these tees in the sale for $13 apiece and shipping to Japan set us back $10.89. Now to return it I will have to pay about $6 to ship from Japan to the US, plus the cost of insurance and shipping cost back to Japan. I had a feeling that this was going to cost more than $13. It just wasn’t worth it so I contacted Uneetee to confirm this situation.

Contacting them was a good idea as here was their reply.

Thank you for contacting us regarding your order.  No problem, please send
us back the item and we’ll send a replacement at no cost to you.  Please let
me know what design you wish us to send and also make sure to include this
email when you send the item back to us.

It is still costing us a little bit but at least we get a t-shirt that we will wear. When we get the new tee we will of course post a review.

Uneetee

Uneetee is a pretty famous t-shirt store but reasonably new I believe. It has a similar business model to Threadless and Design by Humans. People submit designs and they are voted on/chosen and the designer gets money. I will provide details in a later post. Today I ordered two shirts which I will review when I get them. You can check them out below or even better, go to the Uneetee website and pick out a few for yourself.

These two t-shirts have an animal jungle theme although you have to look very closely at both of them to appreciate their beauty. The one of the left I purchased for myself and is very cleverly titled Foster Family. The one on the right is called Paradise and you really have to see the design closeup to appreciate it so I recommend going over to Uneetee to check it out. And the sooner the better if you are hoping to get one as they are selling out.

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