Summer Lovin'

T-Shirt Monster's monthly contest theme for this month is Summer Lovin' (a little late in the season if you ask me) and the deadline is Aug. 31. I have come up with a few modest entries, nothing too fancy, just something I thought I would have a little fun with. You can check them out at these links.



You might have to wait 10 seconds or so for the design itself to appear on the t-shirt as T-Shirt Monster's system is a little slow at uploading the images. I hope they remedy this issue soon as not everyone is willing to wait that seemingly little amount of time in this fast-paced wide web world.

The winner shall receive $500 in cash and prizes ($250 in cash and a $250 gift certificate to T-Shirt Monster). Good luck to all who enter and if you are bored and looking for something to do, pop in to my gallery by clicking on the above links and maybe vote for one of my designs. Just a happy thought.

James Ready T-Shirt Contest Winners

A few years ago, James Ready had a humorous promotional ad campaign to promote its brand of beer.It was, no doubt, a spoof of the numerous competing beer companies that were including a free t-shirt in every case of their beer. The little-known brewing company out of Niagara Falls, Ontario was trying to draw attention to the fact that their premium brand, James Ready 5.5, was priced at a buck a beer, therefor relying on affordability rather than promo swag to sell there product. They called it The Invisible Shirt Summer Giveaway and it was obvious they were willing to let their beer and its price speak for themselves and that they also had a pretty good sense of humour.

James Ready Invisible Shirt Summer Giveaway

Now t-shirts are once again playing a role in a way for James Ready to get the word out about their brew, only this time the shirts are real (honest, they are).

Recently, James Ready opened its own gallery at T-Shirt Monster, a newcomer to the print-on-demand (POD) service industry, based in Oakville, Ontario. Currently, they have several humourous t-shirt designs and sayings from which to choose. However, in order to reach an even larger market, the brewing company decided to hold a contest in conjunction with T-Shirt Monster. The contest was open from April 2nd to June 30th. The rules were simple. Help James Ready spread the word by creating an original James Ready t-shirt and if your design was one of the top 100 submitted, they would send it to you, free of charge. They made it even easier for everybody by supplying T-Shirt Monster with access to their high resolution image and logo files in the clip art gallery. Of course, this lead to a lot of similar designs but the way to stand out was with a clever saying.

I decided I had nothing to lose by entering, but having only found out about T-Shirt Monster 5 days before the contest ended, I had to hurry. First though, I needed to check out, what kind of competition I was up against. I clicked on the contest gallery page and was surprised to see only 18 submissions to that point, despite the contest having been ongoing for almost two months. I attributed this to a couple reasons. One, T-Shirt Monster was not kicking in any prize money as they had on two previous occasions for contests they held, which was $1500 for each winner. Two, the newly-started POD is still not very well known so that means it doesn't have a lot of registered contributors compared to other well established PODs. It looked like they wouldn't even get 100 submissions.

It turns out I was right. By the time the contest reached its deadline, there were only sixty entries, 36 of which were mine. Yeah, I went a little crazy in those five days I had. At first I was only going to submit one design but I couldn't find anything in the rules that prohibited more than one entry being submitted by the same contributor. Inspired, I started brainstorming some ideas and got on a roll, ending on the 5th and last day with my 36th design.

And The Winners Are...
On Friday, July 18, the winners were announced and posted on the website. As I mentioned, the top 100 designs would receive as a prize, their t-shirt for free. Since there were only sixty designs in total, by default, all of those entrants will get their free t-shirt, including me and my 36 designs! This might not be the most financially rewarding contest I have ever entered but it was the most fun. Thank you to James Ready and T-Shirt Monster.

You can visit My T-Shirt Monster Gallery by clicking on the link.

New POD Shop and Contest

I have two exciting new things to talk about today and they are both related. The first one is something I have been waiting a long time for and that is the start-up of a Canadian POD service website. The new service is T-Shirt Monster.

I had been doing Google searches for the last couple years, looking to find a Canadian based POD similar to what Cafepress and Zazzle offer. Up until last week, I had searched with no luck. Then two days ago, by sheer luck, I stumbled across a Google ad for T-Shirt Monster. Where did I see this ad, you ask? Why on the very blog you're reading right now. This would not have been the case if I had not decided to revamp my blog with a different template, new content and inserting Google ads that are relevant to the subjects and area from which my blog is based. After having the ads up for only one day, I happened to be typing a new post and when I checked the final published version, I noticed the ad for T-Shirt Monster. I couldn't believe my good fortune. The ad was like other POD site ads I had seen before. It advertised the ability to create custom t-shirts with no minimum order. What caught my eye however were the two little letters after the dot in the URL. The letters were .ca and I knew right then that I had finally found a Canadian POD service. But were they any good? It took me all of 5 minutes browsing their site to know that this was a great fit for me. I signed up almost immediately. I love their product designer, which they call the Design Lab. It is very user friendly, probably the second best I have ever used right behind Zazzle's.They only offer T-shirts right now but consider the fact they are still new. The galleries are free to open and are fairly customizable. You can set your own markup prices and I noticed a link that indicates that they will be starting up an affiliate program where you can earn 15% on referral sales.

But my favourite thing that T-Shirt Monster has are contest that I am eligible to win. Being Canadian, I have never been allowed to win any contests at all the American PODs I belong to since rules prohibit it. This was always a source of frustration especially when you consider the large cash prizes that were being offered and sometimes design software or drawing tablets. I wanted badly to find a place where I would finally be a participant and not just a spectator. Now I have found that place.

So now let me tell you about my very first contest entry in which I am eligible to win at T-Shirt Monster. A brewing company called James Ready, based in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, has partnered with T-Shirt Monster to create a design contest to advertise their various brands of beer which they sell for a dollar per bottle. James Ready has even provided some of their own high resolution logos and graphics as clip art files so contestants may use them in their design entries if they wish. Unfortunately for me, the contest ends June 30th and having only found out about the website two days ago, it didn't leave me a lot of time to come up with a design and generate any kind of buzz or votes for that matter. However with 4 days left in the contest, I came up with a decent idea, under the circumstances, and submitted it to be in the contest exhibit and the Monster Gallery. My entry is titled Lion Tamer and features the JR lion from its beer label taking a swig from a bottle of James Ready 5.5 with a slogan reading, "Get Ready For A Lion Taming Taste! The winner receives $1500 in cash and prizes so i am keeping my finger crossed. Wish me luck!

Visit My T-Shirt Monster Gallery