weekly contest

Announcing the Rock and Roll Top 10!

January 14, 2016

This week we lost an amazing earthling in music, but now there's finally life on Mars. David Bowie inspired generations with his music, art, performances, fashion, ideas, and his massively successful career as a multi-talented artist. We'll miss this space oddity and we hope to pay tribute to David Bowie with this week's Rock and Roll contest!

Congratulations to Oliveandruby for her winning design, "Music blocks," and please give it up for the entire top ten!

1. 445 votes for Music Blocks by oliveandruby
2. 417 votes for Let the Good Times Roll by christinewitte
3. 356 votes for I Love Rock & Roll by jenimp
4. 345 votes for VINYL by scrummy
5. 325 votes for Guitars by mag-o
6. 318 votes for Jam Session by gnarllymamadesigns
7. 297 votes for rocknrolln by the_rural_rose
8. 292 votes for Rock and Roll by cjldesigns
9. 288 votes for Palm Picks by seesawboomerang
10. 279 votes for Rock-n-Roll Icons by aalk

Vote For Your Favorite Rock and Roll Designs!

January 11, 2016

One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now vote, vote, vote! In honor of the King's birthday (January 8th), cast your ballot for your favorite Rock and Roll designs by next Wednesday, January 13th!

Vote for Your Favorite Pop Art Cookie Fabric!

September 25, 2015

Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were huge oatmeal chocolate chip cookie fans, or so we're guessing anyway. This week, we're looking back to the Pop art movement, but in true Spoonflower fashion, we're putting a twist on it–baked goods! The results yielded an intensely colorful batch of designs with a dash of sugary sweetness. Vote for your favorite Pop art cookie designs before voting ends on September 30th.

VOTE NOW!

Vote for Your Favorite Lizard Fabric

September 11, 2015

Have you noticed that lizards seem to, well.. scatter? We lift rocks in search of capturing our favorite elusive reptiles, only to see them scamper and scurry away in a flash. This week, we asked designers to capture lizards in a slightly different way for our "Ditsy Lizards" Design Challenge! Vote for your favorites now, voting will end on Wednesday, September 16th.

VOTE NOW!

Announcing the Top 10 90’s Fabrics!

September 10, 2015

It's a decade many of us may like to forget, (bad haircuts, combat boots, Aqua Net…) but the 90s still holds a special place in our hearts here at Spoonflower. Nostalgic souls rejoice, this week we are throwing it back to our favorite, loud and grungy decade, it is #TBT afterall! Big congratulations goes to first-time Design Challenge winner, Caja Wong-chung, of Amsterdam, with her Nostalgia-heavy design!

1. 403 votes for Nostalgia by caja_design
2. 325 votes for Lovely Nineties by maeli
3. 287 votes for Snake mobile game by analinea
4. 246 votes for Let's Be Friends! by sarahcatherinedesignsinc
5. 243 votes for 90_s-boots by gaiamarfurt
6. 243 votes for game console 90s by enariyoshi
7. 222 votes for Julie's Cassette tapes by juliesfabrics
8. 222 votes for Be Kind, Please Rewind by tiffanyheiger
9. 208 votes for Floppy Fabric by hallieharris
10. 206 votes for 90s party turquoise by heleen_vd_thillart

Boot camp: The Best Way to Size Your Designs for Weekly Contests

September 7, 2015

You're feeling especially creative, so you decide to try your hand at entering one of Spoonflower's weekly design challenges. You picked the perfect theme, now it's time to start designing. All of the sudden, panic sets in. What size is best? Where do I begin? Fear not! In this post, we'll discuss how to size your designs just right for the standard fat quarter contests, swatch-sized "disty" contests, and even one-yard contests. Read on to find out how to master sizing to create a winning entry for any design challenge theme!

STANDARD CONTESTS: SIZED AT A FAT QUARTER

Most contests default to a fat quarter preview, which is what the community sees during voting. So the trick is to make sure the elements in your design will be easily recognizable from a canvas of this size. If you're using a design program such as Photoshop, it's a good idea to set the canvas (document) size to 21" x 18" which is the size of a fat quarter.

Once you upload your design to Spoonflower, the preview will default to a fat quarter view, which accurately reflects how your design will appear in the contest. If your design has lots of fine detail that you're worried won't shine through at the fat quarter scale, just click the 'bigger' button to enlarge your design until you are satisfied.

Once you're happy, go ahead and enter your design into the contest of your choice using the "Enter in Contest" option to the left of the preview.

Once you enter a contest, Spoonflower provides a preview so you know exactly what your design will look like. It's important to note that we do not recommend editing your design after submitting it, as that can cause the voting thumbnail to break. You also won't be able to upload a revision once your design has been entered so be sure the version you're submitting is the final version. If you don't like how your design looks in the entry preview, consider withdrawing it and re-entering later once you've made your modifications.

Now all you have to do is wait for voting to open, then vote! We totally won't judge you if you vote for your own design.

DITSY CONTESTS: SWATCH VIEW

In fabric design, the term ditsy doesn't mean scatterbrained. Rather, it refers to small scaled, non-directional scatter prints. The motifs in your design ideally shouldn't be larger than half an inch to an inch in scale. So for our "ditsy" contests, Spoonflower typically calls for designs to be formatted in the swatch (8" x 8") size so that those fine details you worked so hard on will not get lost.

ONE YARD CONTESTS

Occasionally, Spoonflower will throw a curve-ball with a one-yard sized contest. Often these are border print contests, but they could also be cut-and-sew contests as well. For these, you'll want to set your document size to 42" x 36." Once your design is uploaded, select the "one yard" view. The larger the preview size, the harder it is to see those details, so keep this in mind when designing.

Once you have sizing mastered, you're half way there! Always remember that the size that may be perfect in a contest, may not be the size you want to ultimately have your design at in the marketplace. Once a contest is over and the results are final, you can always adjust your design back to the size you want it to be permanently. Feeling confident? Find a contest theme that speaks to you and enter now!

Steampunk Valentine Design Challenge from Urban Threads & Spoonflower

January 8, 2015

We are so excited to partner with Urban Threads to help add a new embroidery pattern to their amazingly fresh and offbeat library of designs!

Urban Threads, creators of beautiful machine and hand embroidery patterns, love offering coordinating fabrics for their embroidery patterns–their Spoonflower shop features tons of “fabric designs to rock your embroidery,” in fact! Together, we’re giving you the opportunity to design a Steampunk Valentine themed fabric, and they will create a coordinating embroidery pattern for the winning design!

WHO: Spoonflower and Urban Threads are teaming up for a very special fabric design challenge.

WHAT: Our Steampunk Valentine Design Challenge seeks designs from which a lovely Steampunk Valentine’s themed embroidery pattern can be adapted by Urban Threads. The winner of this contest will work with Urban Threads to create an embroidery pattern to coordinate with their fabric design. We’re not designing embroidery patterns to be stitched in this contest, but patterns with a Steampunk Valentine theme that can be adapted to have accompanying embroidery elements offered through Urban Threads. Check out their handy Style Guide here for a full explanation of the types of designs that work well as embroidery coordinates. The good folks at Urban Threads will choose one winner from the top ten vote getting designs. The winner will receive a $100 cash prize from Urban Threads, and all top designers will receive $50 in Spoondollar credit.

WHEN: The design deadline is February 3, 2015. Voting will take place February 5 – February 11, 2015. The top ten designs and the four winners will be announced on February 12, 2015. The final embroidery pattern will be offered by Urban Threads in the coming months.

HOW: To enter, create your own Spoonflower account, upload an original fabric design to the account, and enter the design in the Steampunk Valentine Embroidery Coordinate contest using the drop-down menu for entering contests. Designs should be created especially for this contest, and all artwork must be your original work and should not include clip art or other available Valentine’s Day-themed artwork. A note about your design file: Urban Threads will need a high resolution jpg (at least 300 dpi and letter size) or a vector file to create the resulting embroidery pattern. We encourage you to prepare your original file for this, but you should create a copy of your file saved to 150 dpi to upload to Spoonflower. Your Spoonflower preview will be viewed at 150 dpi in a fat-quarter size (21” x 18”).

See the full details and official rules here.

GET STARTED!

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