Are you a black-and-white lover? If the answer is “yes”, then you have to peep the latest collections from Lazy Oaf. Their recent collections are classic and funny. They use a very classic color, black and white, and funny, because… it’s just funny!

Can you imagine if you go to the party and wear this Tuxedo Dress (€30.00)? I will proudly wear! This fitted t-shirt dress can be worn over tights jeans or styled up with tights and heels. Now you can look smart in an instance in the Tuxedo dress.

And this. This! Create stares and glares wherever you go with this giant skull face on your dress! This Skull Dress (€30.00) wil make you look cute and creepy all at once. So you will be a mysterious sweet girl. This fitted T-shirt dress can also be worn tight over jeans or styled up with tights and heels.

Lazy Oaf is famous for it’s bright pop graphic T-shirts, reversible sweats and accessories collections. This East London based creative label was started by Gemma Shiel back in 2001 with hand screen printed tee’s and a market stall in East London, skip to the present and Lazy Oaf is available in over 150 stockists worldwide. You can see all the girl’s collections here, and boy’s collections here. Be cool!

Have you ever imagine what would happen if a giant squid predictably met a robot? Oh, no, there would be a big war. Giant squid can grow to a tremendous size: recent estimates put the maximum size at 13 metres (43 ft) for females and 10 metres (33 ft) for males from caudal fin to the tip of the two long tentacles (second only to the colossal squid at an estimated 14 metres (46 ft), one of the largest living organisms). The mantle is about 2 metres (6.6 ft) long (more for females, less for males), and the length of the squid excluding its tentacles is about 5 metres (16 ft).

Giant squid, with its tremendous size can e “devoured” a robot whose height doesn’t amount to much. With eight arms and two longer tentacles, he could wrap the prey and strangling its prey with ease. While the robots are made of iron, and he can do anything well in accordance with the will of his employer. Great posture will easily destroy his opponent. Robot, with all its engine power, will not have a sense of fatigue, even to a match for 24 / 7.

And if the giant squid met with robots, there would occur a great battle. Giant Squid will easily pick up and destroy the robot, so it is with robots, will easily chop the squid giant with iron hand.
You can see all of the battles on The Squid and The Robot tee shirt ($25), a glicée poster from Chop Shop and it is printed on archival Moab Rag Bright white.

Introducing Artwork Junkies, the new t-shirt design contest website from Germany. Artwork Junkies is an ongoing t-shirt design contest that chooses its winners with help from its community. It is also a great place to find other design interested people or keep in touch with your friends.

They offer up to 3.000,- € for the winning design. Which is pretty cool. Not only cash prize, they also offer royalties 1 € per sold unit of the design for every shirt of the day (payment at the end of each month), 75 € in cash as well as a 25 € gift certificate for every shirt of the week, 300 € in cash as well as a 100 € gift certificate for every shirt of the month, 1.000 € in cash for every shirt of the year, 1.000 € extra if your shirt is sold more than 500 times. Wow… a lot of reason to join the competition!

There are some design winners already, and the t-shirts are available in store. Some of my favorite are, the t-shirt of the day, Wild Cat (15,90 €), looks stunningly sexy. I always fall easily for soft colors, and Friends House (15,90 €) but it’s Please Love Me (15,90 €) that steals my heart right away. Want something cute and different? Get Jungle Pals T-shirt (15,90 €).

Now, why don’t you design your own favorite tee and upload it to Artwork Junkies, you might want some good hard cash. Good luck trying!

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a site where you can design t-shirts. This post has been edited by Rangga.

It’s time for another installment of the top blog entries of the week. We have some real winners for you this week and everyone interested in the t-shirt industry will definitely want to check these babies out!

• The T-Shirt War Video Via Color Overload
  DO NOT miss this amazing video! It’s funny, creative, and showcases some very original t-shirt design ideas. It’s also well executed and has the potential to go very viral.
  
• Feature site – Out of Print Clothing by Pop Culture Tees
  If you thought based on the name of the site that this was going to be a site featuring hard to find, no longer printed shirts, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. On the other hand if you were hoping for a top notch find featuring cool designs referencing literature you’re in for a treat.
• Carhartt Spring/Summer 2010 T-Shirts by Eric Elms and Benny Gold From The Fat Seagull
  With Designs from both Eric Elms and Benny Gold, the new Spring/Summer releases from Carhartt are sure to be winners. Check out the crisp, cool designs and don’t forget to snap them up when they become available.
• How To Get The Zombie Look by T Addict
  Say what you want about zombies and zombie inspired t-shirts, but this trend has staying power. They exploded onto the scene over two years ago and have been going strong ever since. The T Addict has found a great tutorial to help with creating these unkillable shirts.
• An Interview with YesNoMaybe by Rumplo
  In this interview Rumplo gets the scoop from the London based t-shirt shop YesNoMaybe. Find out what they have to say about the “Keep Calm” phenomena as well as their thoughts on staying competitive and relevant in the t-shirt industry.
• Buy-Tees.net is winding down… honest by Buy-Tees.net
  It’s a sad day for the t-shirt blog world. Buy-Tees.net, a blog which has featured some of the best interviews and top finds in the t-shirt industry, is winding down. Hats off to Paul Baines for the great work he’s done with this blog and here’s hoping that he still finds time to post now and then.

  Rangga’s note – and this is when I came down to him offering my help. Yup, I will work together with Paul to keep the blog up. How? He will give me direction of what kind of T-shirt he would love to promote on buy-tees.net while let me write on my own style. So, please… see you over there!

• Learn Something New Everyday – The VW Beetle Was Hitlers Idea From Tcritic
  Karl over at Tcritic has found a pretty cool line of shirts called Learn Something New Everyday from the Cargo Collective. As you might imagine the shirts feature little known facts. These are sure to be great conversation starters.
• 9 Epic Ghostbuster T-Shirts Via TeeRater
  I admit it, I’m a sucker for these t-shirt designs compilation lists that feature the best designs on a particular topic, especially when that topic is something as much a part of the cultural canon as Ghostbusters. These shirts are funny, creative, clever, and best of all nostalgic in all the good ways.
• Vintage Retro Wear Seller Review by Defunkd
  Here’s something you don’t see often in the t-shirt world: an eBay seller review. Yet what better resource than eBay is available to the vintage shirt (or vintage anything) collector? Vintage Retro Wear has been offering great finds for almost ten years and Defunkd has done great job reviewing them!
• I’m Feeling Like World Domination From Coty Gonzales
  Anything released by Google is almost guaranteed to be a pop culture – not to mention business – phenomenon. Don’t miss the new “I’m Feeling Like World Domination” shirts referencing Google’s new Buzz release.

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a company that specializes in custom t-shirt printing. This post has been edited by Rangga.

We are starting off a brand new year chock full of t-shirt posts from the top t-shirt bloggers. Like many times before, we’ll be bringing you the best of the best from around the Internet. See what we’ve chosen to pass along to you in case you missed them:

• Nine Notable Brands of 2009 from Tee Junction
  I wanted to include this post first, because I like the brands listed. Miles to Go is one of my personal favorites, but there are quite a few others worth looking at. Start watching them now to see what 2010 holds.
• A Little Graphic Design/T-Shirt Humor via Pop Culture Tees
  Ed Hardy brand t-shirts came onto the scene and spread like wildfire. Recently they have become the butt of jokes by their overexposure and predictable design look. Not sure what I’m talking about? Take a look at this sarcastic design and see how true it is for you.
• Lowdtown Friends and Freaks by Color Overload
  Color Overload brings us a review of the t-shirt line Lowdtown by Ray Masaki. The line was created as its own character community of friends and freaks. If haven’t ever heard of this brand, you’ll want to check it out.
• Lost Writer in TeeFury Lost Parody T-Shirt from The T-Shirt Review
  It is always cool to see a celebrity sporting a shirt created by one of the smaller niche brands. In this case it becomes much more relevant, because it’s a t-shirt based on the TV show Lost and it’s being worn by a writer for Lost. The shirt was featured at TeeFury and just received a popularity bump by its news celeb status.
• Hide Your Arms Cufflinks. Oh my yes. by Hide Your Arms
  Andy just recently launched his first t-shirt for the Hide Your Arms blog. Next up are custom cufflinks with the same design. While these are probably not for sale, they are still cool to see.
• The Highly Motivated Super Motif from Buy-Tees
  Buy-Tees always go above and beyond what their in-depth review. The latest one is about the brand Super Motif and it doesn’t disappoint. They give a behind-the-scenes look at the idealogy of the brand and it shows in the designs of their tees.
• Sinatra Thermochromatic Prototype via Coty Gonzales
  A t-shirt printer was testing out some of his thermochromatic ink and created a design that changes with the temperature of the person wearing the shirt. The shirt design is even cool without the technology. This is one post that you don’t want to miss. Coty sure knows how to find them, doesn’t he?

Here we go again: My favorite tee shirt video review Co-tee TV featuring Cottonable, a collaboration between Cottonable and Coty Gonzales, is up! For this December edition (episode 49), we are featuring really cool tee shirts from two selected clothing labels: Crazy Dog T-shirts and Excess is OK (EIO). But before we go on to the review… I have an awesome news to share:

We got free tee shirts for you!!!

I’m not trying to replace your Santa, but isn’t it awesome to win the prizes!? This is what you should do to make your wish come true:

All you need to do is simply leave a comment below (on the comment form) mentioning your favorite Christmas Song of all time and you’ll be automatically entered to win a tee from Crazy Dog T-Shirts, EIO Clothing or a $25 Threadless Gift Certificate! Make sure you fill in with a valid email so that we can contact you if you’re the lucky winner.

You can leave your comment entries in three places. If you leave a comment in all three then you’ll receive three entries in the drawing. Leave a comment:

• Here on this post (find the comment form below)
• On the Coty Gonzales post featuring Co-Tee TV Episode 49
• On the Co-Tee TV Facebook Fan Page

You can only leave one comment entry on each place. So, if you want to increase your chance to win the prize, it’s highly recommend to leave your comment at all three places! There will be three winners, one for each of the three three prizes.

Important: Last day to enter and submit your comment mentioning what you all time favorite Christmas song is by Wednesday, December 23, 2009 (11:59 pm Hawaii time). Good luck!

Co-Tee TV Episode 49: Crazy Dog t-shirts & Excess Is OK

Now to find out how good the shirts from the two labels you got to watch The Cottonable x Co-Tee TV Episode 49. In this episode, Coty reviewing Evolution of War tee ($16.99) by Crazy Dog T-Shirts and Isometric t-shirt (£29.95 or $48 US) by Excess Is OK Clothing; you can also check out the video summary on CotyGonzales.com

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a t-shirt printing company that allows you to design t-shirts online. This post has been edited by Rangga.

This past week, the t-shirt blogs were in a frenzy over the tidal wave of Black Friday sales and the follow-up discounted sales on Cyber Monday. Since those are so easy to find, I thought it would be best to highlight the recent top blog posts not solely focused on Thanksgiving sales. Here goes:

• Interview with Dance Party Massacre by How to Start a Clothing Company
  Dance Party Massacre is a small clothing line from Boston Mass. How To Start A Clothing Company does a great job of introducing to them and show us what they are all about.
• Tilteed are killing it, tees for $8! from Hide Your Arms
  Andy calls Tilteed “one of my favorite new design contests”. Your ears should perk up, because if Andy likes it, then these guys are doing something right. And there is nothing wrong with selling shirts for $8.
• My T Shirt Went to Vegas… via t-shirt guy’s t-shirt blog
  This is an interesting concept. The T-shirt guy is offering to wear a t-shirt you send him at a famous landmark in Las Vegas and take a picture of it. Obviously that means a blog post will follow. Some of you t-shirt line peeps ought to take advantage of that.
• Paint The Stars Fall/Winter Line by The Black Axe Blog
  In the Black Axe is at it again. They give us an inside look at the new fall/winter line from Paint The Stars. Like always, top notch quality!
• The Definitive Workout Shirt from Coty Gonzales
  Coty brings to us one of the most clever t-shirts I have ever seen. A personal trainer created the shirts for his clients to measure their output during a workout. Nothing technical, but you have to see it to believe it.
• Rude Retro’s Tweet Cloud by The T-Shirt Review
  It is always fun when a blog opens up its hood and lets us take a peek at the engine. Rude Retro gives us a little insight to the content of his tweets and the regularity. Cool data!
• T-Shirt Coupon Codes, Discounts & Deals via Shirts On Sale
  I know I wasn’t going to mention this posts about Thanksgiving sales, but this one takes the cake. Shirts on Sale broke down all of the different sales and even alphabetized them. It is one very good definitive list.

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, an apparel printing company that focuses on custom hoodies. This post has been edited by Rangga.

When it came time to sit down and create another t-shirt blog round-up, there was no better theme for this week than Halloween. The rules were simple. Every t-shirt blog that that used Halloween in the title of their post or the theme was centered on Halloween, they made the round-up. Trick or treat folks!

• Broke Ass Halloween Costume from Cracking Smoking Shirts
  by 101 Tees
  Don’t have a lot of money? Not into the whole dressing up for Halloween? Save yourself some money and buy this cheap t-shirt. Problem solved.
• Halloween 2009 – T-Shirts Around The Web by Color Overload
  Darren at Color Overload highlighted a few different sites that were featuring Halloween t-shirt designs. Nice finds Overload!
• Halloween Costumes for the Lazy Person by Dfunkd
  Sometimes it just feels good to be lazy. Looking at some of these t-shirts, this could be one of those times. To post features printed t-shirts that cleverly double as costumes.
• Special Feature (Halloween T-shirts) by The T-Shirt Connoisseur
  The t-shirt connoisseur created a small collection of t-shirt celebrating the spooky time of your. “Frankie Say Relax” is a pretty cool choice.
• “The Politburo Explains” Threadless Halloween Tshirt via TeeHunter
  The TeeHunter gives us their favorite selection for the Threadless Halloween sale. I have to agree. The detail is great and the design has a very vintage look.

Rangga’s note: Now  tell me, what scary-go-funny tee did you wear during last Halloween week?

We’ve got two winners for Cottonable x Co-Tee TV Threadless giveaways contest!! But first thing first, I’d love to thank you all who have participated — whether you submitted your entry on to this blog or CotyGonzales.com. It was fun reading your hilarious comments!

Although we couldn’t make up to hundreds of contest entries (my eyes is rolling), number of entries we received was good to make us think that… We’ll have another contest for this month!
What’s the prize? How’s the contest will be? Hmm… I can’t tell but ask you to stay tune!

*If you’re a vendor and would like to sponsor the contest, feel free to tell us. I’m open for discussion. And of course you know the rule: the more (prizes), the merrier!

So, let’s get back to the winner of Cottonable x Co-Tee TV Threadless giveaways contest. The winner, as announced by Coty earlier on his blog post and the following video, are… Susan Johnson and Debra Pearlstein (a.k.a StrangeDaze)!

Here we go again, the second Cottonable-sponsored Co-Tee TV: Episode 39 featuring selectively chosen tees from the Internet! In this episode there are two T-shirts reviewed each one from the mighty geek-ish clothing label, Chop Shop and the all-things-Korea brand, Funky Koreatown (was featured on Cottonable last month).

Here’s the episode’s summary…

• Soju-rific T-shirt by Funky Koreatown. Fun shirt, especially for those who have an interest in Korean culture or just like to drink soju! A bit character heavy but I’ll be sure to wear it the next time I go soju drinking.
• Filter Heroes tee by Chop Shop. Pros: Absolutely love the design, perfect for the techy crowd or for photoshop gurus. Price: $20 but you can save $15% if you use the coupon code “givemeabreak” at checkout. And also… a T-shirt.
• Threadless Giveaway (min 22:50).

Did I say Threadless giveaway? You don’t hear it wrong… We want to treat you with some good shirts from Threadless. But first, you gotta know what’s  the rules to win Cottonable’s $ Giveaway!

All you have to do is leave comment(s) mentioning what you plan to be for Halloween 2009 and you’ll be entered to win a $50 Threadless Gift Certificate. Sweeett…!!

You can leave your comment entries in three places:

• Here on this post, or
• on the Coty Gonzales post featuring Co-Tee TV Episode 39, or
• on the Co-Tee TV Facebook Fan Page!

Make sure you fill in the form with valid email (or valid account for Facebook Fan page). And please note that you can only leave one comment entry on each place. So, if you want increase your chance to win the prize, it’s better for you to leave your comments on all of those three places! Last day to enter and submit your comment mentioning what you plan to be for Halloween 2009 is Thursday, October 29, 2009 (11:59 pm Hawaii time).

Give it a try, you might get an awesome treat this a Halloween!

Competition in the apparel printing industry (particularly for T-shirt printing) is getting stiffer every day with technology playing a really huge role. While I’m more interested to blog about the outcome of the printing industry, the T-shirt itself, I can’t close my eyes from witnessing what’s happening in the industry. Set aside the gloomy economy outlook.

On the technology side, digital printing gives t-shirt printers and suppliers a flexibility to execute demands without having to face “minimum order” dilemmas, especially from retail customers who often order a single piece per order. Some of them — you’ve heard these big names: Cafepress, Spreadshirt and Zazzle — take this advantage by allowing people to re-sell its printing service and get hundreds (I don’t know… maybe thousands?) so-called instant-entrepreneurs who sell their T-shirts not only to friends and family, but also across the nation and overseas.

At the same time, e-commerce technology (read: internet with its “online shopping” feature) helps them to find customers and sell their services to customers at a much lower cost on both the customer and seller side by eliminating overhead — like shop’s rent. Don’t forget about printers that use on-demand online printing technology, like InkImprints.com, that allows customers to create their own custom t shirts. As easy as 1-2-3, simply upload your t shirt design or photos, then preview it… Once you got the right look, click the “purchase” button and pay it via credit card and your order ships in 24 hours.

Modern T-shirt printing companies like InkImprints.com combines the use of screen printing and “DTG” or Direct to Garment printing for its production. It uses traditional screen printing (which known to be the best printing method to date) to handle large quantity custom shirts while they house several direct to garment printers for small run orders that require full color prints with attention to detail. This is what all modern tee shirt printing companies suppose to achieve in term of efficient work-process. Want to hear its business model? No Minimums and Free Shipping on all orders no matter what size you want.

*image courtesy of Phillie Casablanca and InkImprints.com

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a company that specializes in custom t-shirt printing. This post has been edited by Rangga.

It’s that time again where we scour the t-shirt blogosphere for the articles that we think deserve a second look. Hopefully for some of you, it will be the first time you have seen them. For the ones you have seen before, take another look….there’s inspiration in these posts:

It’s been a while since I featured tee shirts from one of the most crowded ongoing tee shirt design competition on the internet, Design by Humans (DBH). I can talk about their new tees every week because of two things: one, these designs have been tightly selected by DBH competitive contest (almost comparable to Threadless to some extent); two, these designs are simply outstanding when it comes to experimental, cutting-edge graphic tee shirts! But I need to look for other tee labels too, giving too much attention to DBH might not be healthy for us

But this week DBH’s shirts of the day are special though — there are couple of tees that ping my imagination when it comes to the nature. Did I mention 10% discount? Yes I did. Get this special privilege — 10% off your order — when you use the following coupon code: 5GU2X2 (expires on October 8, 2009).

Now let’s talk about some the new tees this week, design only by Design by Humans members:

Birds of Prey by koivo from Saint-Petersburg.
Illustrate the beauty, elegance and mystery of the flying animal, the birds (I suspect, in particular, an eagle). The silver/yellow-on-black T-shirt design has nice background texture featuring diamonds, emperor crown, fractal and desintegrated triangles — all combined with great color scheme. *image below

Hyena Boy and Deaths LunchBoxby MrRocks from Wellington, New Zealand.
Does a little children be afraid of a monstreous-looking hyena? Not in MrRocks imagination. In his words the random, progressive sketch, intensified with a scary wild hyena after the some positive feedbacks he got the last time he drew some. *image below

Legendary Surfer by mathiole from Brazil.
Watching this design makes me think… who actually started surfing sport? Did the locals at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona coast of the Big Island (as discovered by Lieutenant James King) invent the water-sport? Are they inspired by Legendary surfer who ride the giant Koi? *image below

A Tale Of Two Lovers… by Oddeti from Myrtle Beach, SC.
Geisha is about beautyness like sakura flowers … sadly, that doesn’t always mean happiness. Oddetti’s design follows a story of a geisha desperately waiting for her lover to come home from fighting in a war. Each tee color represents a different time of day as she patiently waits. (yellow means “sunrise”, white is “noon” and black represents “sunset”). *image below

nautasheLL by tealesm from Overland Park, KS
With mixed medium of colored pencil and water color, tealesm makes the best of illustration of the exoskeletons or widely known as “shells”. I’m not a fan of this tee shirt, but I can’t disagree knowing some people like it for the simplicity and meaningful design. *image below

I’m very happy to announce the new website (or rather blog) look of Cottonable. Not only a having a new look, Cottonable is now powered by popular blog platform Wordpress instead of Blogger (Blogger.com or blogspot)… It took me about a month — few hours every day — to install this new template (thanks to Kailoon for desiging this sexy template) and modified it; to customize functionality of the new template; and to migrate all the old contents to the new hosting and adapt it to the new platform (we have more than 1000 postings since I started blogging in 2006!).

It has been steep learning curve for me since I’ve never customize wordpress-powered blog, thanks to my friend (I call him lumut, pronounced loo-moot) who pushed me to try this little tiger. If you’re serious about blogging, you have to start with self-hosted platform (such as wordpress, not to be confused with Wordpress.com) instead of hosted solution like Blogger or Wordpress.com

There might be some bugs here and there and if you find any, please let me know. I also look forward to hear what do you think about the new blog. Thanks.

*more T-shirt postings later! It’s been short of lack posting for the past week.
** A little problem with commenting though, I still couldn’t find way to move all old comment to the new platform.

Anyway, here are some screen shots of the new blog:

New logo…

Shortcut to categories on a homepage…

Blogger/contributor got its own archive page… anyone interested to join?

Archive page for each category…

Blake is a guest blogger from You Design It, a company that specializes in custom t-shirt printing. This post has been edited by Rangga

It is that time again where you trust us to bring you some of the top recent blog posts covering t-shirts. This week we covered quite a range of posts and topics. Hopefully you haven’t seen them already and you find a few you like.

Here’s the lates update from one of the biggest yearly T-shirt compatition, The Design By Humans 10K. It has just come to a close, claiming csj89 and his design Mecha-Labaw as the big winner of the $10,000 prize… Hoorrayy!

Mecha-Labaw (odd name, huh?) was inspired by Carabao (or Kalabaw), a water buffalo often used by farmers in agricultural country, Philipines — an animal which has been long considered as a national symbol. Interesting story is not the only clue that help this design win the prize; it’s its intricate, vectored detail and huge print, collected the most votes of all the top four designs.

IBut csj89 wasn’t the only finalist to walk away with a big prize- 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, and 5th place were also printed, each earning their designers a print and a nice pay check.

Indeed, these designs are not to be missed: CollisionTheory claimed second place with Twilight Rain, a colorful riff on nature. Third place went to TangYauHoong and his design Journey to the City of No Horizon, which paints a picture of a a city cleft in two by a river made of sky. Gloopz’s SOS Strawberry Flavor (this one was my favorite out of all designs!) nabbed 4th with its unique mix of style and laid-back humor. And in fifth place was the distinctive Umibozu by thestray, a spooky seascape based on Japanese folklore. See them all only on Design by Humans!

The illustration is all about casual clothes taking over! The Suits and ties run for cover as an Invader casually roams past! Made out of everyday clothing, picking up the dreaded business folk in his path.”

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a company that can help you design t-shirts for printing. This post has been edited by Rangga

This week we found some real gems for our regular top blog posts list. Check out these winners:

Rules, not much. The only requirement is that either (or combination of) “Coty”, “Co-Tee TV” or “Cottonable” PLUS the brand of the shirt (i.e. Stove Monkeys, Art of the Fan, Ban T-Shirt, Limitees, BLXNK) has to be included somewhere in the photo (see below), either in the bubble or outside the bubble.

You can submit as many entries as you like! There are four different photos for you to choose from, one for each of the four tees reviewed in this episode.

When you’re done with your photo entry, post here in the comments if you like but REMEMBER to post it on the Co-Tee TV Facebook Fan Page. And then email your hires entry to cotygonzales at gmail dot com. Got it? Okay, get to it!

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a company specializing in custom t-shirt printing. This post has been edited by Rangga

It’s never an easy task narrowing down the huge field of t-shirt blog posts to a concise, ten post list. As always we’ve done our best to ensure a good mix covering a wide range of areas. Enjoy!

Let’s get off from main of this blog, which is T-shirt, for a while. No, I will not talking about politic, economy, crime news or anything that gives you a headache. We will still be talking about something fun; which is still under things-to-buy category.

Couple days ago, a friend of mine thought of buying something for his girlfriend for their first anniversary and asked my opinion about giving her a Mikimoto pearl earring. I was like “huh, what’s that?” and that’s when I did a little bit reading on this thing called Mikimoto pearl.

The name “Mikimoto” was dedicated to Mikimoto K?kichi (1858-1954), the first researcher-entrepreneur who successfully brought cultured pearls to the market. His ability to develop a technique called “Mise/Nishikawa” — was first introduced by William Sawville-Kent and brought to Japan by Tatushei Mise and Tokishi Nishikawa — had earned him a success to cultured whole akoya pearls and founded the modern cultured pearl industry.

Unlike natural pearls that come out in varying shapes, sizes, and qualities, and (worst) are difficult to find; cultured pearls can be “designed” round from the start. This means high quality round pearls can be produced at much lower cost; making them available and affordable to everyone — and even for us! So, send your big huge to Mr Mikimoto.

Mikimoto pearls (also called flower pearls or hanadama) are famous for their unparalleled beauty and brilliance — this is what makes them excellent fashion accessories, other than a classic gift for our loved one. I remember seeing a 20-something girl wearing her Mikimoto necklace in a cocktail party, it looks special; it feels magnificent on her. Too bad I didn’t have chance (or perhaps, courage ) to say “hello” to her.

Back to my friend; he mentioned jrdunn.com, an authorized Mikimoto jeweler which he thought as a good place to by an mikimoto earrings. I don’t know about this website but I totally agree with my friend that you have to by only Mikimoto Pearls from authorized jewelerer. This is the only way to make sure items you buy are authentic, in new and perfect condition. And of course, we don’t want to buy a jewelery without manufacturer’s full warranty and certification.

That’s fashion lesson of the day, I hope you learn something new! Back to T-shirt news tomorrow.

*images from Wikipedia and jrdunn.com

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a printer that focuses on fast custom t-shirts. This post has been edited by Rangga

It’s that time again. The time when we bring you the top ten most recent t-shirt related blogs. We surfed the web for the most interesting, relevant, and all around cool, list that we could find. Here’s what we came up with:

• More Harry Potter T-Shirts Than You Can Wave A Wand At as listed on Hide Your Arms
  With the new Harry Potter Movie coming out soon, now is the perfect time to snatch up a cool t-shirt to celebrate. This blog lists some of the coolest designs available.
  *check also Hide Your Arms‘ the ultimate list of T-shirt lists!




• Ript Apparel is Rippin’ It Up, as posted on The T Addict
  Ript Apparel is another “TeeFury-like” website featuring a new shirt every day, for only a day. What makes them stand out, as the T Addict points out, is their high quality artwork and cool designs. Check out some of their recent designs featured in the post.

• Okoto Keeps It Real, a new T-shirt brand review by Color Overload
  Color OVerload shines the spotlight on the indie surf apparel line from Okoto. The cool thing Darren highlights is their continued participation in t-shirt design contests in the t-shirt community.




• Monday Giveaway “Goddess of Abduction” T-Shirt from Abduzeedo
  You gotta love free stuff right? Especially when it’s a shirt this cool looking. All you have to do to win is to write about where you would go in it. Sounds easy enough!

• 30 Sweet Handpicked Designer T-Shirts listed on Jacob Cass’ Just Creative Design
  This is a good list of high quality designed shirts from Design By Humans. The lists is coming from Jacob Cass, who has quite a following in the design blog community. See if your taste aligns with his.

• Soaring Through The Ivory Skies is one more brand review by Buy-Tees.net
  It’s always good to keep an eye out for new T-shirt lines that show promise toward becoming “the next big thing.” One great way to do this is to check out the reviews posted on various shirt blog sites like Buytees.net. Ivory Skies is a company that shows a huge amount of design promise. Just peep the awesome “Astro Hand Tee” for proof.
  

So, you need some inspiration in designing or selling your T-shirts to the mass? Check these posts out:

I’m pleased to announce the launch of a special new project at You Design It – You Design It TV*! You Design It TV is simply a branch of the main site designed to be a one stop location for all video content related to the t-shirt world.

Blake is a contributing blogger from You Design It, a printer that focuses on cheap custom t-shirts. This post has been edited by Rangga

Another installment of our t-shirt blog roundup and some tough decisions were made to bring you our faves. We tried to mix it up this week and show you some places we haven’t featured before. Here goes!

• 410 BC Summer Line & Co-Founder Interview by Tee Hunter
  Have you gotten your 410 BC summer tee yet? If not you’ll want to read this interview with co-founder Nicole and find out why the summer line is so hot. Here’s a hint: think simple and classic!
• Summer Sale at Lowdtown (via T-Shirts Around The Internet)
  Speaking of hot summer shirts check out Lowdtown’s latest offerings. If you hurry you can snatch these up at 25% off!

• 10 Zombie Tees to Dress up your Reanimated Corpse are listed on 10Tees
  We’ve already covered several hot t-shirt trends with this post so why not point you in the direction of another enduringly popular trend: The Zombie T! The undead have never been more hip than they are in today’s t-shirt world. Check out these fantastic designs dedicated to showing off the coolness of our ghoulish counterparts.
• Top 10 T-Shirt Shops for Geeks according to PC Mag (via Hide Your Arms)
  Let’s face it everyone love t-shirts, especially geeks. We even have t-shirt blogs dedicated to geek tees, so it only makes sense to have a list of t-shirt shops specifically dedicated to the geek consumer.
• Apparel Printing Techniques by Catalyst Design explains for you on Emptees
  There is a surprisingly wide array of different t-shirt printing techniques and they all have their pros and cons. Here’s a handy little crib sheet for keeping it all straight!

And these are some tips clothing brand owners and T-shirt designers (and curious people):

New T-shirt from Toney the T-shirt Jewelerer will be out on the 15th June, now available for pre-order. A T-shirt entitled Solitary Tiger sets a purple-dominated artwork of Tiger on black shirt. This limited Edition printed tee is 100% cotton with woven Satin neck label — free shipped inside a black luxury gift bag.

the immortal coil by Andreas_Mohacsy is my favorite tee of the week, rising to the top over several strong contenders. It just succeeds on so many levels, from color… Read more in New This Week at Design By Humans

Tee Invaders is the latest addition to the t-shirt contest world, having officially launched today. The site is taking a bit of a different tactic in its approach, giving… Read more in Tee Invaders Launches

Goodjoe is ushering in their first contest with a nonprofit partner, teaming up with Sacred Heart Community Service to create awareness for The Center on Poverty. They’re asking designers… Read more in Goodjoe Contest with Sacred Heart

I have to give props to That Old Movie Magic by Travis Gentry. What appeals to me is how, conceptually, it mirrors the experience of a movie- when the lights go out, everything becomes… Read more in Threadless Summer Heatwave Sale

This edition of the top t-shirt related blogs was tough to come up with because there were so many good ones. We tried to mix it up and cover all aspects of the t-shirt world. Get you some and enjoy!

• The Importance of Taking Professional Looking Pictures of your Clothing Line by Adam Hendle for I Am The Trend
  This is a fantastic blog post that not only highlights the importance of taking professional looking pictures of your shirts, but also offers several great tips and shows examples of some high quality shots.
• Selling Your Clothing Line to Boutiques by How To Start A Clothing Company
  So let’s say you’ve managed to stay true to your street cred roots and you’ve also masterfully marketed your shirts with great photos. Now it’s time to get them into some boutiques and stores and this blog offers some great advice for that.
• Have a Brew in the Clink Room on Taddict
  We get a sneak peek into the design process of a very successful design duo. The Clink Room offers some very high quality work, check them out.
• Traditional Art vs Digital Art by T-shirt Factory
  While we’re on the topic of art here’s a shout out to T-Shirt Factory for offering us a terrific blog post about the use of traditional vs. digital art. This is yet another major concern and ever relevant topic for t-shirt designers.

• Tshirt Day is Coming, Who Wants to Take Part? on Tee-Junction
  June 21st is international T-shirt Day and tee-junction is already urging us to begin planning what we can do to make June 21st a truly memorable day. Sounds like a worth cause to me.
• Screen Printing Clean Up Part 1 as seen on Tee Biz
  In our last top blogs post we brought you a very informative video about the printing process. Well, as with all tasks the ‘doing’ is inevitably followed by the cleaning up. Good clean up procedures are essential for producing high quality shirts. Check out this quality, two part video.
• The Hundreds wants to sell but not sell out on LA Times (via Color Overload)
  The question of how to stay true to your roots while expanding into a profitable company is a very real and major concern in the indie t-shirt world. The Hundreds certainly offer some useful advice in this interview.
• Contest Watch: Week of May 21 from SingulariTee
  This is a very concise, informative post featuring all the contest related highlights of the week. I’m a sucker for these types of posts because contests are a major and thriving part of the online t-shirt world and posts like this offer a quick way to stay up to date on them.
  
• Teejunkie Designer of the Year 2009 – Winner Announced from Teejunkie
  Teejunkie took on a pretty ambitious undertaking. Was it too early in the year for a decision like this? I’ll let you decide on that when you check out the strong list of designers.
• Get Your Teeth In To FreeGums from Buy-Tees
  What better way to close out the weekly list than with a fantastic review of a t-shirt line? Buy-Tees routinely spotlights up and coming brands that are worth a look at and FreeGums is certainly no exception.

PARK(ing) Day is an event when artists transform parking spots into temporary parks. It’s a cool concept and one that undoubtedly deserves a neat tee design to go with it… Read more in PARK(ing) Day 2009 T-Shirt Contest

ShirtFight’s latest victor is Wee Man and the Masters of the Puny Verse by Gaunty, an inspired Muppet Babies style take on some classic 80s nostalgia. The concept works… Read more in Wee Man and the Masters of the Puny Verse at ShirtFight

Let’s Get Physical by Keith Kuniyuki (herky) repurposes a mousetrap into a rodent home exercise system, hilarious for a couple of reasons. I love the idea that this mouse is eschewing cheese… Read more in New This Week at Threadless

Caponocca is the newest tee design contest on the block, one that (at first, anyway) might be defined by it’s printing limitations. While other sites typically offer 4, 6, 8… Read more in Caponocca Debuts

It’s time for another recap of our most fave recent blog posts. Late April/early May has brought us a wealth of terrific, high quality content and it was tough picking the cream of the crop. Here’s what we came up with:

• VIDEO: Automatic Shirt Printing via Teebiz
  We thought the best way to kick off this list is with a pretty cool video that educates you on the automatic screen printing process. There’s a lot of high quality content packed into the 2 and a half minute video.
• Show Love, Get Love by Color Overload
  This is a pretty terrific post explaining the benefits for t-shirt brands to link back to the blogs that do write ups on them. It only makes sense and it’s a win-win situation. Let’s hope it becomes a trend.
• Annual Apparel’s 2008 T-Shirt on the T Addict
  Annual Apparel is a brand that captures the important headlines and pop culture of each year with their designs. It’s a simple concept but it makes for a very popular, hard to ignore shirt. Very cool!
• The Spy Tie discovered by Militant Geek
  It’s hard to believe this high tech, Big Brother style invention is just becoming widely available. Kind of creepy but yet still very fascinating.
• Mr Vector Goes Live, Excitement Ensues from Pop Culture Tees
  This new royalty-free vector artwork service by Pop Culture Tees gives t-shirt designers another great resource at their disposal. Check it out.



• Kingstrike Offers A New Way To Source T-Shirt Designs in Rumplo
  Kingstrike is offering an alternative business model to t-shirt designers and it’s definitely worth checking out. Read this interview.
• Tasty Green Tees From PLB via Buy-Tees.net
  Once again Buy-Tees brings us a very thorough, informative review of a promising new t-shirt line. PLB is a green company based in Montreal. Check out their work.
• Indie Tee Spotlight #22: Go Ape Shirts on Coty Gonzales
  Indie Tees, like most other “Indie” things have a wide range of creativity and talent. In this high quality blog post Coty spotlights some of the best from Go Ape Shirts.
• How to Advertise and Market Your Clothing Line by How to start a Clothing Company
  In this article Ray covers some of the essentials in marketing a clothing line. He covers misconceptions, techniques, and several great tips. This is an excellent resource for those eager to get their line to market.

Two Dinosaurs Caught in a Chinese Finger Trap by Justin White (jublin) is my pick for shirt of the week because, well, just look at it. This rules! The concept… Read more in New This Week at Threadless

Springleap’s latest winner is Happyland by Cash, and it’s a great pick. Anyone who enjoys the outdoors will appreciate the artist’s depiction of the planet as a jovial fellow… Read more in Happyland at Springleap

The latest winning design at A Better Tomorrow is New World Order by thew, depicting a clash of cultures in the form of a handshake. One is human and one is mechanical… Read more in New World Order at A Better Tomorrow

Full Metal T-Shirt’s latest winner is The Summoning by Scott Gipson. What I’m digging here is the sheer originality- mixing Mayan iconography with the horror of Lovecraft… Read more in The Summoning at Full Metal T-Shirt

Earth Mother by Sonne gets my nod for shirt of the week- and frankly, I think it’s one of the best shirts printed in months. Flowing lines and watercolor embellishment set the scene deep underwater, a setting full of mystery and the undiscovered… Read more in New This Week at Design By Humans

Octopus on yo’ Shirt by Jonah Block (biotwist) was an easy choice for shirt of the week- it’s bold, appealing and most of all fun. It’s cool to think of this cyclopian beast lurking in the depths, about to hook a boat by it’s anchor and drag it down into the darkness… Read more in New Shirts At Threadless

Full Metal T-Shirt is a competition site that immediately stands out- with their steampunk web design sensibilities and impressive color range in their DTG shirt prints, this is not a site you’ll get confused with the other contests out there… Read more in Full Metal T-Shirt – Comment to Win a Free Shirt!

ShirtFight’s latest winner is Imitation of Life by Moonjelly, which knocked out the competition in the Shirts From the Future contest. The style is really interesting, using the shirt color as the main color for the android with only minimal bits of color and wire defining its shape… Read more in Imitation of Life at ShirtFight

Red Dot’s Spring/Summer 2009 takes inspiration from the cannot-be-missed tradition of beach holidays. Road trips, sunshine and snorkelling; these are outdoor activities what we’ve been looking forward to all year.

Though the economy may still be struggling, our favorite t-shirt companies are doing their best to give us a good deal and helping us get our t-shirt fix.

• 50% Off Sale at Zero Boutique by Coty Gonzales for Tee Junction.
  Zero Boutique is moving, and they clearly don’t want to tote around a bunch of extra inventory. Not only are they having a 50% off clearance sale, but they’re also offering an additional 10% coupon!
• Euan Gallacher – Behind the Shirt on Pop Culture Tees.
  Most times it’s the designers that are the creative minds behind the products. Euan Gallacher is a great example of this. Thanks to PCT (and Andy of Thunderfrogs) for the insightful interview.
• Coty Loves Threadless #7 by Coty Gonzales.
  Creating videos as a t-shirt blogger takes a lot of time and effort. Being consistent with a series of videos deserves a medal of honor. Check out his 7th installment of Coty Loves Threadless.
• Designer’s Guide to the Apparel Printing Industry by Adam Wagner for Go Media
  Go Media always does a great job of covering the ins and outs of the apparel industry. Learn from the experts on this one.
• Ten Bills, as featured on TShirtReview by Phil.
  When it comes to economical it’s pretty hard to beat paying only ten (one dollar) bills for a shirt. It’s never hurts to get high quality with that low price while you’re at it.
• Tide Selling Vintage Washed T-Shirts for Charity by Karl of Tcritic.
  At a time when most companies are scrambling to make every dollar possible, Tide is selling vintage tees for hunger and natural disaster charities in America. I love to see it!
• The Celebrity Undead on The T Addict.
  The T Addict is all about some goons and goblins. In this t-shirt find, he shows us what Lil Wayne will look like in the afterlife.
• Zen & Fuka was featured on iloveyourtshirt.
  Japanese style designs are hot right now and Zen & Fuka has some of the best, freshest, and most elaborate Japanese style designs out there.
• 24 Japanese Designers + Graniph on Rude Retro.
  Speaking of awesome Japanese style designs, here are some more! Graniph, a company dedicated to supporting the arts, recently released a new line of 24 shirts all designed by Japanese artists depicting aspects of the Japanese culture.
• The New Guy at Color Overload.
  We have a new t-shirt blogger in charge at Color Overload and his name is Darren. Welcome to the t-shirt blogosphere and we hope you bring a fresh perspective.

ShirtFight gets a new T-shirts: You might need more than a nightlight this time… with original design submitted by Evanimal. As you see on the picture above, this tee is about your scariest childhood nightmares — monsters under your bed! This tee currently on sold for $15 (discounted price). The design printed using 5 color Plastisol inks on American Apparel black tee.

I first mentioned ShirtFight about few weeks ago before their launch on 5th March. ShirtFight aims to be the next popular T-shirt design competition of the internet (which is almost synanymous to Threadless). I was pretty excited prior to launch but not so much after that. I’m not saying that all three initial tees are bad (well, the first tee is not that good but I respect ShirtFight’s members vote) but it seems like ShirtFight’s designs can’t get around of incredible monsters and weird-creatures.

Just fresh from the oven, Dissizit new T-shirts (Men only) are now sold over 80’s Purple. It seems that 80’s Purple doesn’t carry all Dissizit new tees because — as I saw on Dissizit website — there are more to hunt that are not sold by 80’s Purple like Definition Style and Fuck the Love T-shirts. Help me find the other shirts, where can we buy the rest of them!

Anyway, the new released are dominated by black color tees brings up design theme of women (as we can see on Swinger and Tres Chick tee) and gothic-darknesss (Judgement Day and Pixel Skull tee). I’m pretty sure that Dissizit doesn’t care that other labels are so busy these days promoting their Spring-ed theme clothes. The only white is Sold Out tee, which happen to be my favorite for this new collection. From 80’s Purple, you can buy those tee for $31 each.

Like many of the best small apparel lines (Linty Fresh and Seibei come to mind), LowdTown is a labor of love of one artist, Ray Masaki. His influences come from both urban culture and comic style, and it really shows in his shirt designs so far.

Their logo tee is, unlike most, very wearable, because the pop can has personality to spare. The design is reminiscent of shaking a soda and then popping the top- usually resulting in a stream of bubbles, but here more like a scream or babble.

Meanwhile, Townster shows the other side of the line, focusing more on the eclectic customer base. The character is friendly, bold, and fun-loving, the kind of guy who sets trends instead of following them.

Especially for a line that just launched in January, LowdTown is off to a great start. It’s always fun to watch a business grow, and wonder who might be the next person to create a company that turns into a giant like Johnny Cupcakes. What other small apparel lines are you excited to watch grow?

Epic Weave are dishing out some excellent tee designs, the best of which are character-based. Having a shirt center around a character is a great way to make it memorable. It gives people something to relate to and identify with, spurring their imaginations.

Useless to Pretend shows a sensitive lad in a wolf costume, and unable to continue the act of toughness a tear slides down his face. Some great texturing on the fur and nice hand-drawn typography complete the scene well, adding to the lo-fi appeal.

Folkin’ Around is another gem, with an appeal that goes far beyond its funny title. I love the interaction of the tattooed hippie and bird singing together, despite the storm raging behind them. Pattern and texture play a big role here, with plaid, wood grain, and more giving some nice ambiance.

And of course, even if character tees aren’t your style there’s still a lot to enjoy. Check out Bigfoot Boombox or Pass It On to see what else Epic Weave is up to.

This week some of our favorite blogs featured informative or amusing videos, fascinating designer spotlights, and of course some trends in the world of the design community. So sit back, relax, and enjoy these hot 10 blog posts fresh off the press!

• And The Award For Best T-Shirts in a Movie… from Defunkd
  With everyone still buzzing from the academy awards, there’s definitely no better time than this for a feature with Susan Matheson. Matheson is, to quote Jimmy at Defunkd, “Tinseltown’s go-to gal when a flick calls for a vintage t-shirt wardrobe.”




• Hmmm…what might this be? from HideYourArms
  Check out this really weird commercial from NerdyShirts and don’t miss the discount coupon code!
• Making A Screen Printing Registration Guide from Teebiz
  Ever been curious about how t-shirt printers create their screens and make sure everything is centered? Check out this informative video!
• A Better Tomorrow Goes International! from TEEstrict
  The German design competition company A Better Tomorrow is now going to be an INTERNATIONAL design competition company A Better Tomorrow. Check out this blog post for details.
• Top 5 Competition Sites from T-Shirt Factory
  Speaking of competition sites here’s some a concise run down on the top 5 in the t-shirt design community according to the t-shirt factory.
• Designer Spotlight – GodMachine from TAddict
  GodMachine just racked up a win with the Tee of the Day over at Emptees, and that’s barely scratching the surface of his design talents. Check out this designer spotlight for more details.
• Twitter Love from Pop Culture Tees
  If you haven’t heard of Twitter yet you’ve probably been living in a cave – without cell phone reception. Props to Liz at Pop Culture Tees for showing us how to match our Twitter addiction with our t-shirt addiction.
• Don’t Be Jealous of Envee’s Tees from Buy-Tees.net
  You may have noticed Envee on the twitter list above. Curious about them? Check out this blog entry for everything you need to know about this hip t-shirt company.
• IATT Spotlight: CryWolf from I Am The Trend
  Speaking of really cool t-shirt design companies, it looks like I Am The Trend spotted another one. CryWolf has a hot, in-demand style that looks like it can set some trends.
• Design A Tee For Kings Of Leon from Coty Gonzales
  As most of you have heard by now, Design By Humans is partnering with bands to create some really hot merchandise and ride the cross-over wave. In this blog post Coty keeps us up-to-date on their latest project.

This post was guest written by Blake, from You Design It where you can design t shirts and read their t shirt design blog.

Most celebrities don’t really understand the internet, to put it mildly. Chances are they’ll have an official webpage, but if they have a blog at all it’s likely to be some forgotten link, updated less than monthly and largely ignored. This fame-related Luddism has, however, somehow passed over a few celebs, chief among them Stephen Fry.

In addition to having a fleshed-out website and a frequently updated Twitter, Mr. Fry is delving into the world of print-on-demand. He’s the first celebrity to be printing with MySoti, which has developed a reputation for being the most artistically-focused of the POD sites (maybe the first celebrity on any of them?). As you might expect, the fare is pretty web-centric, with his site’s header as one option and a Twitter joke as another. But there are also some nice surprises like the giant squid attacking a taxi, which would be a fun shirt on any site.

Print on Demand shirts from a guy who starred in Jeeves and Wooster and V for Vendetta? The internet, and the t-shirt world, just got a little more interesting.

Conventional wisdom is that for a shirt design to sell, you need to be printing something the audience wants. It’s easy enough to do if what they want is a pun, a picture of their favorite celebrity, or a witty phrase. But what if what they want is the kind of design that just makes people say, “Huh?”

That’s where absurd t-shirts come in. They’re designs intended to make no sense at all, and they amuse because they turn your expectations upside down.

I recently designed an absurdist shirt for Shirt.Woot, titled Dinosaurs Who Are Communist for Some Reason. It’s based on the question of what dinosaurs would have become if they were still around, and delivers the most ridiculous answer possible. Part of why it works is that it takes two groups that are vilified for very different reasons and combines them.

Another favorite weird shirt concept is Bananaphone’s The Retort. Why are the fish covered in patterns? Why would they care about foreign markets? It makes no sense at all. But it looks great on a shirt, and is sure to make people laugh as they wonder at it.

Turtlehead’s contribution to the absurd genre is Gay Whales for Nuclear Disarmament. It has a number of elements that serve to give you pause, starting with the idea that whales have political opinions at all. The stencil-y style gives it a realism that contrasts with it’s fantasy-based theme.

Those are three of my favorite absurd shirts- if you’ve got a great one that I missed, link it in the comments!

All lovers (and haters, too), be happy coz you have special gifts from PopJunkie! Whatever you do this Valentine’s Day, celebrate it with a drop dead romantic dinner or alone in with your laptop (I mean, your soulmate) Pop Junkie gives you 40% off all T-shirts and other items for the rest of February.

PopJunkie has been my favorite label recently, they keep rolling out those rare imaginary, classic-vintage artwork for print-on-shirt that go in flow with contemporary t-shirt. Check out Space Unicorn T-shirt, for instance, and you’ll what I’m talking about. I can’t wait to see its Spring collection which promised to be better than earlier collections.

Twitter users, let’s unite and get connected! I don’t know if using Twitter shirt is the new geek, but it seems. Especially if you wear its T-shirt with big, bold fonts that make statement — just like what Regal Clothing have over here.

This is actually good looking tee that combines typography art and self-proclaim slogan in a streetwear fashion… for geeks!

Facebook is pretty ubiquitous these days- chances are that if you’re on the internet at all, you have a page and your contacts include friends, family, and even co-workers. At 150,000,000+ members, admitting that you’re not on it is tantamount to being Amish.

So it’s no wonder that some t-shirt entrepreneurs are taking their businesses right to those masses- and Status King has hit upon a particular niche that should hit home with heavy users of the site. Their Facebook application allows users to proudly wear their Facebook status (or someone else’s) as a tee.

Even if your wittiness doesn’t extend to coming up with wearable status updates, you’ll still find something to do with Status King. They have a contest where you can either enter your best status update (winner gets their tee free) or vote on what other people have come up with. So far the all-time high-scorer is this gem: “Sarah used to play sports. Then she realized you can buy trophies. Now she’s good at everything.” Think you can do better?

via Mashable

{miles to go} doesn’t try to be hip when it comes to zombies, flashy colors and gore, but it strives to keep consistent look that focuses more on clean, classic styles. Or I would say “very classic” — most of {miles to go} designs are inspired by literature and classic art, the name “miles to go” which was taken from a Robert Frost poem.

Most T-shirts printed with discharge ink technique, known as process where the ink has a bleaching agent mixed in — it will re-dye the fabric to the color printed when the T-shirt is first washed. Once it’s washed, you won’t feel the ink when your wear it. Sounds cool.

HeadlineShirts is simply the good-est combination between recent issues on your newpapers’ headline and playful imagination that make thoughtful jokes. Whatever happen in the world — pop culture, politics, music and of course history (like the 80s!) — Headline Shirts is on the scene to make a t-shirt about it.

Via Troundup — you use the code “TROUNDUP” at checkout, up until next Friday (Feb 6th) you’ll get a free surprise shirt with any purchase. Thanks Colin!

This week’s t-shirt links have a focus on streetwear with a lot to see and read. We tried to bring a little flavor and hopefully introduce you to some new blogs that you haven’t seen before.

• 50 Streetwear Blogs from Kineda
  This terrific list of fashion blogs makes it easy to keep up with the latest trends, not just in t-shirts – although there are certainly some gems here – but in footwear and general fashion as well.
• Dan Tague – Hope in The White House T-Shirts from Freshness Mag
  Extremely clever artwork made even better by being printed on t-shirts. You have to give these a once over.
• Johnny Cupcakes Back to the Future T-Shirt via Sneakhype
  Our first time to post about Sneakhype. It won’t be the last if they keep bringing braking news like the limited edition Johnny Cupcakes Back to the Future tee.
• Sponsoring Brands: The Secrets to Get Great Advertising for the Cost of a Few Shirts from How To Start a Clothing Company
  Whether you’re actually interested in getting sponsors or promoting your line, this excellent article offers a great inside look at this important aspect of the industry.
• Linty Fresh Live Show #3 Review from Coty Gonzales
  Not only does this post supply a great sampling of highlights from the chat with Eric Terry of Linty Fresh, but it also links to part of the show itself and supplies a great dose of info on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), web design, and coding.
• Heartcore Color Seps Video from Taddict
  A great tutorial on 4 color process separation AND a link back to another great tutorial on spot color separations for artwork. NICE!
• Objectified T-Shirt – New Film from the Maker of Helvetica the Movie From Tcritic
  I’m sure most t-shirt followers have seen the popular “Objectified” t-shirt done in Helvetica. Well now there’s a documentary.
• T-Shirt Hell Shuts Down, Internet Gasps from Hide Your Arms
  T-Shirt Hell is closing and Hide Your Arms is covering it.
• Design By Humans Gets Musical from The T-Shirt Review
  Speaking of fairly surprising t-shirt related news, this one is a bit of a shocker too. This move definitely looks like it could be really good for both Design By Humans and the artists they partner with.
• Black Scale X Karmaloop T-Shirt Collection by Hypebeast
  Black Scale introduced a new t-shirt line exclusively to Karmaloop. Two heavyweights teaming up, I like to see it.

This post was guest written by Blake, from You Design It where peeps can design t-shirts and read their t-shirt design blog.

Mother of all offensive T-shirts, T-shirt Hell (somewhat NSFW), announces it will out of business on February, 2009 — as announced on its website. I can’t totally be sure about it (since the site all about jokes and T-shirts), we can only wait and see on the mentioned date. One clue that they are serious this time is that sister brand, Torsopants, which started in earlier 2008 closed down not long after similar announcement.

Sunshine Megatron, a guy who changed its name by public votes, started the company in June of 2001, nearly 8 years ago, with plan of selling satirical, the most controversial and (for some people) the funniest tees on the internet. Its T-shirts, at best, promotes racists, sex jokes and everything offensive (to all ethnics, to all religious). So offensive that I promised to myself not give any words about them here on my blog. I wish this will be last time I wrote about T-shirt Hell. Well, despite all the doom and gloom about recession, good thing happens in 2009 (assuming T-shirt Hell will seriously go to hell).

More reports on Rude Retro’s T-shirt Review. An article posted on March, 2008 on Denver WestWord News actually gave a clue about the closure of T-shirt Hell.

Shot Dead in the Head is a purveyor of mainly English joke shirts, poking fun at pop culture and the sort of folks who pass as celebrities over there (I’m somewhat kidding. Somewhat). So you can imagine that they’re probably having a bit of a hard time competing in such a crowded market, where sites like Snorg and Busted sell similar products at lower prices.

And so they’ve decided to print some of Banksy’s iconic work on t-shirts and sell them. It’s really a brilliant plan in some ways. They’ve recognized that anything involved with Banksy is sure to bring publicity. And since his work isn’t sold, there’s a huge market for it. Best of all, since he is a mysterious figure, he’s incredibly unlikely to sue for his share of the merchandise profits.

To me, therein lies the problem. It’s incredibly unfair to the artist to sell his work without his permission. And Shot Dead in the Head has decided on their own what the royalties are, rather than entering into negotiation to determine what the work is work. While the arbitrary royalty amount will be donated to charity, that still leaves me with a lot of questions about how much this royalty actually is. A few cents per shirt sold? A few dollars? At any rate, Shot Dead in the Head will certainly be profiting from work that isn’t their own.

If you follow the t-shirt design circuit even casually, you probably recognize the name Flying Mouse. He’s a multiply-printed Threadless juggernaut who was named 2007’s Most Printed Designer and Newcomer of the Year on their site.

And of course, like all flying creatures, this mouse is spreading his wings and traveling through some new territory, in the form of his own line, Flying Mouse Clothing. In it, you’ll see some of the same sorts of mind-bending concepts that impressed the Threadless masses- like the gold foil print of a lone archer facing off against a massive, fire-y bird in Phoenix Fighter. Another stand-out is We Love Bow, which uses two penguins to form the titular bow (the penguins are printed in flock ink, which is a great touch).

Something I really appreciate is the collaboration tee being organized at the site. Not only is it a great way to make this shop stand out in the crowd, it’s a cool way to get people interested and invested in the site. Plus, who wouldn’t want to have their doodle on a t-shirt? The current theme is Song Bird, and anyone can submit to be a part of it (20-30 will be chosen, and the deadline is February 15th, 2009).

New graphic tees of collaboration between Australian surf, brand Insight (started by Something’s Natalie Wood and Ksubi’s George Gorrow) and German art-rock favorites Chicks on Speed was born — inspired by we call an ‘80s-throwback takes on surfwear. Sensing humor in fashion while not getting out-fashioned is definitely one of the tips. These are some tees that go beyond graphic prints put on front show, but combining all of those with chic cut and sew. Pretty sexy, to sum them up — and hey, I don’t mind they’re made in China.

Images via tobi ( you can buy online here too!). Alternative shops on Karmaloop and Azalea Boutique

The J!NX Winter ‘09 collection seems to be a moment of departure of geeks and gamers from shy, unfashionable, anti-social personalities to the new sexy people who proud of themselves. For a while — on its latest collection, you can forget about deadly unattractive, black color slogan T-shirts saying LMAO, ROFL or “Noob” or jokes only geeks can understand. On its latest collection, J!NX wants to show that geeks and gamers can be fashionista too — with V-neck tee, for example.

Check out the whole Winter ‘09 Line of J!NX — for all new T-shirts and hoodies! Indeed you, shy geeks, can still have your old-school slogan T-shirts from J!NX previous collection

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If you’re a serious vintage tee fans, you probably don’t miss regular T-shirt clearance on 80sTees.com. With T-shirt prices started from just $9.99 and other items discount as much as 50% — you know it’s hard to resist. 80sTees.com is one of the biggest officially licensed movies and band merchandise online retailers; and popular vintage brand, Junk Food clothing.

Yesstyle, my favorite Asian-style fashion shop, introduces the new Korean brand: Dodostyle. Dodostyle is right on the pulse of today’s Asian fashion scene with its eclectic but modern fusion of frilled, feminine styles and edgy, urban-themed layered looks. Cute tees it offers like “Smile” A-Line Long tee and Applique-Lettering Dotted Tee-Shirt.

Here’s special offer for Twilight fans out there. Hot Topic has stocked in lots lots official merchandises, including T-shirts and hoodies, from the famous Vampire movie. Some T-shirts are rare finds I’ve never seen on other merchandise shops. So, if you’re looking for the widest variety of Twilight movie tees, Hot Topic should be your ultimate shopping destination.

Never have enough all-bama things from Obamaniacs? Needless to answer but to congrats America for scoring a new president. To commemorate President Obama’s historic inauguration into the White House, Go-Bama (a.k.a GAMA-Go) re-releases its popular Yetibama tee shirt. Limited quantities are available now in black and gold — 100% cotton and 100% audacious.

Having worked with several “names” in streetwear apparel industries like Pacific Sunwear, Common Threadz, Von Zipper and won highly competitive T-shirt design contenst Design by Humans — Ryan D. Seaman couldn’t stop himself to start his own clothing label under catchy-name: Hung Out To Dry (a Cottonable’s sponsor as I wrote this)

HOTD spells everything that inspired Ryan as a graphic artist: from typography, patterns, apparel, fabric to anything that’s aged or worn, old books, paint and hand made. Not to mention continuous experiment he made with combination of hand drawn elements, multiple textures and other odd materials on every artwork.

The first edition of HOTD sold on limited run for no more than $20 bucks — with designs printed on custom tags American Apparel tees and silkscreened imprints inside. If grunge, punk themes are into your style. You don’t want to miss this new label.

Pop culture is what unites us- almost everywhere on earth, certain characters are recognized. So by humorously playing with concepts that those characters stand for, you can create a hilarious scene that makes a statement anyone can understand and respond to.

That’s what Chunk does with their designs. Whether they’re putting Darth Vader’s evil ways into perspective by showing his mugshot or contrasting Snow White’s innocence by arming her, you’ve never seen your childhood favorites in quite this light before. Other highlights that will leave you laughing include a Ninja Turtles rendition of Reservoir Dogs and Mickey Mouse trapped in a war zone.

Popular in the early 90’s, the thermochromatic color-changing T-shirts reacts to reacts to body heat, the sun, or any other sources of heat. And it’s touch-sensitive too. American Apparel make the come back of Thermochromatic Sheer Jersey T-Shirt during Summer last year, and now a clothing label called Change Me Clothing (CMC) comes out with — promise of — better technology: revolutionary DYENAMIC INFUSION which superior to the dying technologies of the past. It’s resilience to color-fading. CMC claimes that its tee will last countless cycles in the wash without significant fading.

Sounds great, but the question is… Would you wear this tee today? I’m not asking you, hey, retro-geeks

Samuel Wang recently started a new clothing line called Akufuncture (which is actually sounds like acupuncture but instead of “punc” it’s “func” for funk — get it?). He and the team of Akufuncture stand on the goal of creating more awareness for Chinese culture through fashionable urban apparels.

D’uh admittedly, I haven’t done much write on Asia-influenced urban T-shirts but I really hope to spot more in future.

Anyway, the people behind Akufuncture felt that as much as the State has been enamored by the mystery of the Far East, there are still very little knowledge about Chinese culture — especially among the younger generations. Thus, Akufuncture is trying to to spark an interest of people in just knowing bits and pieces about the label and where it come from. In doing so, each product description includes a short note on the artistis style and mythical figures used as part of the T-shirt design.

So far, there are only two figures highlighted — Monkey King and Nezha