Submerged

I really like Mindrenew's stuff. Lots of fun, asymmetrical critter designs. Cute without being sickly sweet good colors, a fun handdrawn feel.

My favorite part of this design is the turtle swimming upwards—the one whose entire belly we get to see. It's just...kind of..adorable. And I'm not a person who typically jumps at the chance to wear "adorable" shirts, but gosh darn it... I can't resist these little turtles.

Great intro comment, too: "No matter which way your turtles travel, they will remain submerged within your Pacific Blue shirt." It's like they're my happy swimming turtle buddies, and could magically move all over my shirt, like something from an old claymation TV show. I don't know where I'm going with this.

If you liked this but didn't have the chance to vote on it, there are still a few hours left on Orbital Tree House Disaster, so head over that way.

taekwondodo

I have to admit that I'm a fan of Ice Age, and the real reason I like this design might well be the rallying cry from the movie: TAE KWON DODOS--ATTACK!!!. But even so, this is a nice illustration, and the joke is there even if you haven't seen the movie by which it was inspired. Nice details on the wood, and the high-jumping flightless bird just cracks me up.

scarecrow on the scarecrow's head

I love the idea of designs printed in the color of the shirt below them. Black-on-black seems to be the most popular on Threadless (there are at least two in the running right now: see le noir est le vieux noir, which I also like), but I could also go for a nice orange on orange or yellow on yellow. (Don't worry, I'm not holding by breath.)

This is a great illustration. Dark, creepy, detailed, and perfect for any fall day (or night). If you can't see it, adjust your monitor—it's hard for the artist to give the impression of black-on-black and still have a visible design, but it's made even harder by the different monitor settings out there. What's perfectly visible on one computer (mine) might be an empty black box on another (my dad's).

Or if you're too lazy to adjust your settings, you can just trust me and vote $5. =]

pirate infested waters

I've spent the last couple years (it seems) staying clear of the Pirate vs. Ninja argument. Despite my longstanding stance of diplomacy, however, I was recently drawn into the fight at a forum I frequent, and my true colors began to shine. I must admit: I am definitely a pirate fan, and have been since my earliest glimpses of J.M. Barrie's Neverland. All other arguments aside, however, this shirt is pretty cool.

I was initally iffy about the shirt color (Yellow with light blue? Are we sure about this?), but despite its rather lackluster appearance on the submission screen, I am convinced that this would look utterly stunning in person. (Picture an actual light yellow shirt with actual light blue waves—I can hardly take the excitement!)

The woodcut/linocut look of the water thrills me; I love how detailed it looks. There's simply no comparison between this and having the same ships on a solid blue background. I love how the ships are all riding on their own little waves—it's something I didn't even realise at first, but it makes the whole thing so much better. I even appreciate the similarity of the ships: the colors breaks up what might otherwise be monotonous (har!), and it gives the design a cool sense of "Well, what makes this one different?" It's like a motivational poster, but without the cheese.

I would love to wear this shirt.

Everyone eat

I have to admit, I'm really digging the Little Miss Sunshine Loves Threadless competition. Of all the Loves contests that I've been around for, this one has probably had the highest concentration of designs I like.

What can I say? I dig yellow. =]

Anyway, I really like this design. Tea and toasted breadbus. It's such a perfect combination of the bizarre and the mundane, and it's pulled off without being obnoxiously "Look at me! I'm ironic!" I really appreciate the handdrawn look.

I also really like that this sub does something with the VW bus besides toss it into a mix of random stuff. This is one of the submissions that I could see myself wearing entirely apart from any knowledge of Little Miss Sunshine. At the same time, though, it still has obvious ties that anyone "in the know" recognises immediately. So it gets major props for that.

In conclusion, my favorite part of this is the smiling sunshine on the teacup.

Swimming in vinyl

"Just your standard fat kids swimming in a giant record tee."

This is awesome. I'm not "into" music like a lot of people seem to be—I listen to the radio in the car, or when I'm cleaning the house, but I own a total of maybe (maybe) seven CDs.

And I'm not really into the whole retro music thing. It was only a few years ago that my family made the final switch from cassette tapes to CDs (although we currently cannot play either one in our vehicles), and when we were kids, we'd (often? occasionally? It's hard to tell; my childhood blurs together...) dance around to my mom's old records. She actually had a bunch of records that were specifically made for kids to dance to, things with names like "Clean up songs" and "Naptime songs" and "Songs for Spring." Oh, and we had at least one record with a bunch of Disney songs like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and The Mickey Mouse Club Theme Song.

I'm rambling. Sorry. My point is that while these things have a certain personal nostaligic value for me, that nostalgic value isn't something I need to wear on a mass-produced (and yes, even Threadless counts) shirt. So my real point is that most record/cassette shirts are dumb.

This, however, is not dumb. Or maybe it is, but if so it's a delicious, playful, summery kind of dumb, and that's okay. It's simple, it's friendly, it's funny, and I really, really like it.

Domestication

This is killing me. The title of thhe submission is Domestication, and people are still complaining that it's a "flying hog" instead of a flying pig. Come on, people! Get with the game! You're missing the point of a great design!

Anyway, I think it's really clever. I like the way it sits on the shirt, the animals are neat and well-chosen, and it speaks of familiar phrases, to boot. Even without the title, I think people would understand what was going on if they looked long enough.

I'd like to wear this design.

Fantastic Typewriter

I love typewriters. I use them to type letters to friends, type stories to myself, and type conversations (back and forth, over several days) with my siblings. They are fun, they are wonderful, they are old fashioned, and they click and clack with a satisfaction that cannot be achieved with a computer keyboard.

This design is everything I have ever wanted in a typewriter. It is lovely, heavy-duty, old-fashioned, and equipped with enough keys for a typing hyperactive squid. The line art is intricate and perfect, and the colors woo me with their dream-writing potential. Look at the birds! The spottings of color! The wonderful Seussian arrangement of the keys! Oh, heaven.

I would prefer this without the caption, since I think explicitly saying "dream writer" takes away from the fantastic possibilities of what the image could be. The artist has already commented that the text (and signature) are as good as gone, and I feel bad that people are still complaining about them after the fact. That is too bad, but hopefully it will not hurt the score too much.

The design is one that I enjoy on a white shirt, which is rare. (The artist has also offered blue and pink as colored-shirt options, but again, people continue to complain about the fact that the submission itself features white.)

Sheep Trick

This is awesome. It's a wolf, it's a sheep, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing, it's a monster, it's a minotaur, it's a sheep trick.

Green on natural is perfect.

Conspiring Nuns

This is creepy and I love it.

the last flight

Just the mention of "special glow ink" for the light blue color in this design is enough to make me squeal in delight—and I'm not a squeal-y person.

This is one of my favorite designs. The colors are perfect, the detailing is beautiful, and the idea is neat and well-executed (whatever that means), but what really hooks me is the story. Because there is a story, and it is amazing. What's going on? Are the people tiny, or is the bird giant? Why is the boy dressed in protective racing gear, and the girl not? Where are they flying from? To? And why, why,why is it "the last flight"?

I feel like a fool typing all those questions out, of course, because no one really asks those sort of things out loud. But there's a strange, sweet sadness that I see in this picture, and I love it very much.

daydream on spring street

There's something about caterpillars that I just can't get over. I love them. The caterpillar in this design was the first thing that caught my eye, and then, having released my eye, it caught my heart. Or something. *cough*

Right, well, I like this a lot. The blue version is my favorite, because those colors are frankly awesome. Very springy. Or sproingy. Actually, both. I also like the brown-and-pink, and the white outlines make me happy. The straight-up silhouette versions I find boring—this design really needs the white outlines to give it pop and definition.

I like how helter-skelter the tree is, with branches (and light posts, and inexplicably giant caterpillars) coming off in weird places. It's strange, it's fun, it's a spring day in a giant tree. I love the tree sprouts at the end of a dashed-middle-line street, like everything that normally lives on that street just gave up reality for the day and decided to live in a giant tree, instead.

Seven Monkies

Sock monkeys in miniature. Seven of them. There really isn't anything else that I can say about this that wasn't addressed in starr226's comment below:

without the girl, actually, it's just a bunch of floating monkeys. THAT's random. The whole image is supposed to be a little off, true. The contrast of styles and use of color. The girl shows the size of the monkeys in perspective. It's not about sock monkeys—it's about a girl with a handful of TINY sock monkeys in her hand. A sock monkey is just a sock monkey, but when they're 2 inches high in the palm of your hand...well, that's something different, isn't it?

bichos en mi ombligo

"Bugs in my bellybutton"

This is awesome. I don't know a lick of Spanish, so I'm relying on someone else's translation (I never entirely trust other people to translate things for me, because I know that if I were them, I'd be sorely tempted to pull a fast one), but the idea cracks me up, and the little beasts in question are pretty darn neat-o.

I can't tell if the on-model version boasts one or two colors, but it doesn't really matter. I like the idea, I like the critters, I like the design-supporting placement—I just all-around like this design.

As far as I can tell, the only downside is that according to the comments, a wholesome girl like myself would be ill-advised to wear this in Puerto Rico.

The Chicken Dance

This was part of the blogger-driven Pinche UNO! competition, and one of my favorite designs to come out of that. At first glimpse, I admit it's obnoxious, but it definitely grew on me. I love that the shirt is dark-on-light-orange. I think it's blinding and amazing, and a great tribute to the seizure-inducing colors that many formal dresses come in.

It's an awesome staged prom photo (the legs of the one girl are the crowning touch, I swear), and I love how the "personalities" of the dance-goers come out. Plus, the concept is bizarre enough that it doesn't scream "CHICKEN DANCE, I MADE A JOKE! HA HA!" It's more of a "What the--?" design, with an answer that makes you slap your forehead in righteous dismay.

I still think this would be a fantastic print. Coral for girls, and I would buy this so fast my bank account would spin.