Fabric Of the Week Contest: Vote for fabric designs created using water colors

I don’t have a problem with clipart, as long as it is part of the public domain or you have purchased it, but this particular contest called for watercolor. Maybe some of the designs just look more manipulated than they are if you look at a larger image? Some of them clearly are heavily altered in Photoshop.
It was NOT easy to correct my gouache (opaque watercolor, which the good folks at SF okayed for the contest) for a perfect repeat in Photoshop. I also have no problem with that–I’m sure other watercolorists needed to retouch the edges of their pattern so it repeats nicely while keeping the bulk of the print as a handpainted watercolor.

I also agree that paging through dozens of designs that don’t meet the criteria is frustrating. Also frustrating is seeing designs that appear to have been done from clipart, or other public domain art. I know there is a lot of this available, and think it’s fine if someone wants to make a fabric for their own use from it; but, PLEASE, don’t enter it in the contests. It’s even worse when it finishes in the top ten, which has happened at least a couple of times. I guess these designers don’t feel any guilt about the fact that they are CHEATING! Since they no longer show the order in which all the entries finished, only the top ten are benefiting from the additional exposure of their designs.
I realize that the designers have to be on the honor system, as I’m sure the Spoonflower folks just don’t have time to check out all the designs that might be based on another artist’s work, which includes clip art. Perhaps Spoonflower should institute an abuse reporting system where someone could report a design that uses someone else’s art by referencing the source that the art came from; such as a Dover Publications book. Spoonflower could then remove that design from the contest and ban the designer from entering future contests.

Heather, I’m with you. As someone who worked really hard to meet the criteria and come up with something I am highly frustrated that a good portion of the designs don’t follow the guidelines. Some of these you can’t even tell if the person entering actually created the base image. Flipping thru extraneous designs is frustrating.
I feel the real followers of SF might care about voting for designs that follow the guidelines but the Twitter folks who come to vote for their friend don’t.
Many kudos to those who created original designs.