Being Irish I wouldn’t want to miss out on a contest such as this: a Saint Patrick’s Day design contest. The prizes seem pretty lame but if you are making St. Paddy’s Day designs anyway why not. If you win you will get a nice bump from the Spreadshirt newsletter. See details below.

We’d like you to create a St. Patrick Day design, submit it to the Spreadshirt Marketplace and tag it with STPATTYCONTEST. We will then select 3 winners and award the following prizes:

One of three 1st positions in the Bestseller category in the Spreadshirt Designer between February 25th and March 17th (One of our most trafficked areas on the site)
One of three 1st positions in the Holidays & Occasions/St. Patrick’s Day category in the Spreadshirt Designer February 25th and March 17th
Winner’s design featured in a Spreadshirt St. Patrick’s Day Newsletter sent to Spreadshirt’s house list (Date TBD)
Design will be featured in the main teaser on Spreadshirt.com homepage
One coupon for a free product ($35 value + free standard domestic shipping)
Basic Rules

Contest officially starts on February 5th and ends on Feb 19th, 2010. Spreadshirt will announce the winners on February 19th, 2010.
Your design must be submitted to the Spreadshirt Marketplace and tagged with STPATTYCONTEST during the above period.
Designs should be closely or loosely related to the themes surrounding the idea of the St. Patrick’s Day. Be creative. A generic green clover will definitely not win you the prize.
The winners will be picked by Spreadshirt staff based on following criteria:
Creativity and Originality (New and previously unsubmitted designs have preference)
Versatility (Invites customization – provokes thought for adding text or multiple designs)
Market Appeal (Immediately attracts attention from the viewer)
Applicability to Apparel (Design can be used on a wide variety of apparel items)
Production ( Vector designs are preferred )

As you may or may not know by now, Cafepress has an agreement with the ABC Network that will allow Cafepress shopkeepers to make fan merchandise and sell it in the store. This is pretty awesome for shopkeepers because, as I have mentioned before, your designs will have a ready made market. People are already searching for Lost merchandise so you just have to design some quality stuff. (Note: there are rules regarding the designs so please read them.)

You can win a $200 CafePress Gift Certificate, LOST seasons 1-5 DVD box sets, and a t-shirt signed by some of the LOST cast (cast members tbd) – one prize package will be awarded for each category.  AND, one Grand Prize Winner will be selected by a LOST producer from the 5 category winners!  The Grand Prize is:

• A trip for 2 to Oahu, Hawaii for 4 nights (round trip airfare and hotel included)

Sounds like an awesome prize and it is. Oahu is amazing, I just got back from there a few weeks ago.

Contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at time of entry.

Read more: Cafepress

Cafepress are holding another design contest and this time the task is to create a design for a gym bag with the theme “Get in shape”.

WIN a $500 AMEX gift card plus a SIGG water bottle AND a Flip Mino video camera. Submissions will be accepted between December 18, 2009 and January 6, 2010.

Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at time of entry.

Details: Cafepress

The Avery & Zazzle Photo Album Design Contest is over and the winner is KrispysKingdom who will be receiving a check for $2,000 for the 1st place entry Family Tree Photo Binder! You can see the winning binder below and as you can see it is a very creative work of art that allows customers to customize it to their hearts content.

Family Tree Photo Binder by KrispysKingdom

As far as I know, this contest was only open to legal residents of United States or the District of Columbia which is pretty slack as I have just noticed that Zazzle have opened French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian and New Zealand versions of their site on top of the already existing US, UK, Canad, Australian and Germany sites. Also I noticed a recent contest at Cafepress that allowed users from several countries to participate. (Not Japan, where I live, though.) It’s time to step up to the plate Zazzle.

Cafepress are holding a design contest for Valentine’s Day. Should I have said that they are holding it against Valentine’s Day? If you consider that it is called the Anti-Valentine’s Day Design Contest. Anyway, this is one of Cafepress’ ways to encourage people to create you designs. If your designs win the contest you will get rewarded not only from the sales commission but also the juicy little prizes they are offering. These contests are just for US residents unless something changes in the future.

Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at time of entry.

Whether you are living in the US or not I recommend taking part in these contests as Cafepress will promote them a lot giving your designs a better chance of selling.

Below is the information from their email, but check out the terms and conditions on their website for more details.

Traditionally, Valentine’s Day is a chance to let people know how much you care. Flowers and hearts are abloom, and gifts celebrating love fill the CafePress Marketplace. But let’s face it, some people have a bone to pick with Cupid. And what better way to do so than on a T-Shirt. So embrace your inner wit, sarcasm, and cynical side by being a part of our Anti-Valentine’s Day design contest (and win some great prizes too). This year we have three ways to be a big Valentine’s Day winner.

1. Create an Anti-Valentine’s Day design in one of 3 categories:

Single Life: Dating, the flirt, bad break-ups …
Anti-Love: Scorned by love, lonely hearts, obsessive love
Boycott It: Commercialism, apathy, “who needs it”

2. Submit your design between January 8 and January 22 by tagging it:

Single Life: AVCsingle
Anti-Love: AVClove
Boycott It: AVCboycott

3. Win one of three Grand Prizes – $250 in American Express gift card. Or win one of three second prizes – $100 CafePress gift certificate) or one of three third prizes – $50 CafePress gift certificates.

We’ll be judging on creativity, uniqueness, and how well your design expresses the category. So get wild and show us how you would stick it to V-Day!

Please see our official Anti-Valentine’s Day design contest rules and guidelines

before entering.