I hadn’t browsed the catalog yesterday for the new prints, but the curse of “me-hating-white-shirts-but-loving-the-design” strikes again with Penguins Are My Home by Michael Valadares Ferreira. Cheers to adorable, load-bearing penguins in structural form.

Penguins Are My Home

Hey kids,

What with the immensely huge holiday sale and some CES travel, I hadn’t been able to get a handle on my errant Thriftee AIM/SMS notification script.

Well tonight we spent some quality time and I found my server was giving it the business but that’s fixed now and happily the Thriftee Notifier is rocking it hard again. For you.

Sign up for email, SMS or AIM Thriftee ($10 shirt!) alerts on your favorite shirt designs or sizes | Or browse their catalog of awesomeness and pay the $15 before your fave gets gobbled up

Threadless just finished an inventory check and quite a few previously sold out shirts are back up for sale! Check it out and happy hunting!

I snagged these little beauties after missing them the first time:

Once again, there’s a veritable bonanza of gorgeous subs up for scoring on Threadless and I’ve hand-picked some of my favorites for your voting pleasure:

While I don’t particularly like chocolate (and am, apparently, the only woman on earth who feels that way), I do love shirts with anthropomorphic chocolate hearts eating a box full of delicious Valentine’s Day humans. Mmm, humans; delicious, delicious humans. Admit it. It’s funny. And extremely well drawn, I might add. Put this on a cranberry tee (Threadless needs to print far more of them) and you’ve got yourself a Valentine’s Day Massacre winner.

My verdict: $5 (View submission)

Quite possibly my favorite shirt up for scoring now and any time in the recent past. Who doesn’t love a cute little piggy? Look at his fat little piggy butt and his cute little piggy face and tell me that your heart isn’t melting with piggy love. But a cute little piggy alone, adorable as he or she may be, doesn’t win a Threadless print and Friends In Low Places goes the extra mile by having a thoroughly adorable story behind it. Frank’s (I’m calling the pig Frank; I’ve made up my mind) got his own personal bodyguards to protect him when he goes for a swim. We should all wish for friends who would protect us from alligators while we lazed around in the water.

My verdict: $5 (View submission)

Weirdness abounds. Who doesn’t want a shirt with a giant parrot eating a woman’s head? Or perhaps she skinned the parrot and is wearing it as some sort of fashion statement. Either way, this shirt is awesome. Look into those staring, beady bird eyes and feel the urge to vote $5 building inside you. That’s right, Monsieur Perroquet demands you vote $5. At the top of the scoring area. The $ and the 5, in that order. Excellent. Now go get Monsieur Perroquet a cracker. A big cracker.

My verdict: $5 (View submission)

I’m as tired of skull shirts as the next Threadie, but Tombstone is undeniably awesome all the same. What makes it awesome is a bit harder to pin down. Is it the silver metallic ink? I do love metallic ink (silver being my favorite), but that alone won’t win the “awesome” vote from me. Is it the cowboy on his faithful steed? Probably not. Cowboys aren’t inherently awesome anymore (and never were for me). Is it the skull? Another no. If I had a nickel for every time a Threadless voter complained about a design having another skull in it, I’d be marginally less strapped for cash than I am right now. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things being more than a sum of their parts. Maybe it’s the splatters (again, I doubt that’s what’s carrying the full weight). Maybe there’s some sort of subliminal message encoded in the seemingly random splatters and scratches and other “noise.” All I know is that I like this.

My verdict: 4 (View submission)

I like simple ideas. In fact, I like them more than complicated ones the majority of the time. Elephas Maximus is a simple idea in the extreme: incorporate the sleeve of a hoodie or long-sleeved tee into an elephant design by having it stand in for the pachyderm’s trunk. Not only is it brilliant in its simplicity, but it’s really nicely executed to boot. Simple, clean but surprisingly detailed. And did I mention the sleeve is the elephant’s trunk? But what about t-shirts, you ask. Threadless doesn’t print designs only on hoodies. Can’t help you there. It would look awfully strange on a short-sleeve tee. Like the elephant either has the world’s shortest trunk or has somehow managed to rig his trunk up with a system of pullies so that it can be retracted so as not to get in the way. But as a hoodie? Winner!

My verdict: $4 (View submission)

I have to admit, it’s the mole in the front that wins this one for me. Something about how politely he’s tapping the guy on the shoulder before clobbering him over the head. “Excuse me, sir. Me and my companions would like to have a word with you.” BAM! Right in the kisser! I also have to admit that their claws while creepy (they’re edging dangerously close to three-toed sloth territory, which isn’t somewhere I personally want to go), they sort of sell the design for me. They’re freakin’ ginormous. I can only imagine that they must feel like being tapped on the shoulder with a baseball bat. A pointy baseball bat.

My verdict: 5 (View submission)

It’s a rare day when two shirts I vote $5 on come up for print.  Heck, it’s a rare day when anything I vote $5 on comes up for print…or at least it seems like it some days.  But today, yes today(!), I opened my email and found two alerts telling me that two incredibly designs are up for my (and your) purchasing pleasure:

I loved this design for its beautiful simplicity when it was up for voting and I love it even more on a shirt. Unlike some Threadless shirts, it’s not flashy. It’s not clever or disturbing or just plain weird. It’s…pretty. And festively colored, like by wearing it you could effectively camouflage yourself inside the tropical birds enclosure at your local zoo. (The beautiful parrot that makes up the design wouldn’t hurt your ninja-like fashion skills in that event, either). It’s not the kind of shirt that’s likely to not be awesome anymore a year from now, when the joke runs its course and the concept gets old and tired. Because there is no joke and no fancy concept. Just a beautifully rendered parrot, wrapping around your torso in a birdy hug.  Wear it to the zoo.  Wear it to Carnivàle.  Wear it to the grocery and gloat over the envious looks you get from your fellow shoppers as they admire your gorgeous new tee.

Mr. Choppy didn’t fare so well in scoring, although I gave him my full and enthusiastic $5. He scored a measley 2.18 and yet the Threadless gods in their obvious wisdom chose to print him in all his simulated process, faux-decal, axe-wielding glory. And the kid’s version has orange carrot juice instead of blood! I gather there’s some controversy over whether anyone in their right mind should buy this shirt for their child, carrot juice or no, but you have to admit that there’s a certain awesomeness to the whole vegetable mass murder idea. Mr. Choppy either really loves or really hates carrots. As for the adult’s version, he’s apparently doesn’t limit himself to the vegetable kingdom when choosing his victims. Did some poor misguided soul attempt to separate Mr. Choppy from his foot and met an untimely demise at his would-be victim’s hands? Did Mr. Choppy just snap? Who knows. Who cares.  Plus, it’s printed on Threadless’ new custom tees.  This is the perfect opportunity to try them out without breaking the bank on a Select.

I got a tasty notification today that Threadless reprinted Miss Scarlet today, one of my long-time favorite designs that I’ve been waiting for for I don’t know how long to show back up in a Guys XL. Now, I’m hovering for a few seconds for it to maybe hit Thriftees pricing, since I’m plum out of STPs, but I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and grab it if I start seeing the stock go down.

House Salad looks way cool and there are plenty of other designs to keep you guessing today.

Get shopping!

It’s been a great year in general but an even better one for Threadless. They’ve printed hundreds of designs, launched a brick and mortar store, bumped up their prize values, launched the Bestee awards, launched the alumni club and so much more.

Plus, we had some great fun running our cake contest and a few other smaller contests throughout the year. Threadcakes *will* be back later this year again, with even bigger prizes.

What was your favorite Threadless-related event for the year?