free shipping and a tee competition

RedBubble are offering free shipping on all orders up until 2359 on 30 October (GMT). In addition, a few of our favourite tee designers are having their own mini promotions and sales to sweeten the deal.

• Win original pen and ink artwork from rubyred
• Win original art with a Halloween twist from Chris Wahl
• Grab a bargain from Simon Sherry who is reducing the price on a range of his shirts

Drop me a bmail if you spot any others!

There's also just over a week to go til the voting starts for the awesome t-shirt competition "This is London Calling". London indie streetwear store Demo is giving RB t-shirt designers the chance to take their graphics to the streets of London.

The theme is London Calling, two words to inspire thoughts of the artistic side of the city, from gritty urban streets and subversive graffiti to grandiose architecture, centuries of history and everything in between.

The grand prize winner will have 30 of the winning shirt purchased from them at a markup of 30%, and have their tee displayed in the store for two weeks, with a special temporary front window display for all the passers by to gawp at. Two runners up will have 20 shirts purchased off them at a markup of 30%, and have their tee displayed in the store for two weeks.

If you fancy your chances you can find all the info here.

flash gordon brown

As we struggle to deal with a global financial crisis, will Gordon Brown be the saviour of the universe? Popmash has managed to combine, popular culture, politics, topicality and humour into one classic t-shirt. If you're not impressed by that then check out the youtube animation that goes with the tee (below).

skateistan

Visit the featured tees page on redbubble at the moment and you may notice the following t-shirt from Skateistan.



A closer inspection reveals that Skateistan is Afghanistan’s first dedicated co-educational skateboarding school. Aussie skateboarders Oliver Percovich, Sharna Nolan and Travis Beard are providing free free skateboard tuition to Kabul kids with the belief that Skateboarding is a great platform for getting youth from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds engaging with each other positively. It's also not a bad way to show the kids that westerners aren't all bad.


Skateistan’s mission is to build cross-cultural understanding and develop youth confidence, leadership and life skills. It's a pretty impressive cause and the tees don't look too shabby either so if you fancy getting behind them then get yourself a t-shirt. All proceeds go towards buying new boards and the plan to build a skate park in Kabul.

thou shalt not annoy

In Australia, the NSW State Government has introduced laws giving police the power to fine people for “causing annoyance” during World Youth Day in Sydney next week. The laws “have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music”. People who fail to comply could be fined $5500. You can read more about the laws here.

The Agent Provocateur (t-shirts with messages) group on the bubble has been running a challenge over the past week, asking people to design a t-shirt as a protest against these laws. Below are some of the designs submitted. You can see all the designs here.

lip service

I was browsing the new t-shirt mosaic on the bubble and spotted the t-shirt below by the very talented chris wahl. It reminded me of tees posted by chamba so I thought I'd do a post dedicated to some more mouthy designs.

grrrr by chris wahl

mouth of madness by chamba

no no no no no no by j3concepts

tv teeth by Omar Enrique Romero Aréchiga

big mouth strikes again by dave gregory

happiness is a warm iron ...

Here at bubbling, we're all about bringing you the shirts you may have missed so it is with great pleasure we introduce the ultimate t-shirt browsing machine ... the warm iron. I'm told there are 4096 t-shirts featured in this mosaic. If you were to break your browsing down into bite sized chunks then you could discover around 78 new t-shirts a week for the next year just by using this handy tool. What are you waiting for? Go and get yourself a large helping of t-shirty goodness.

Lars: hand drawn type queen

Lars stuns us again and again with her hand drawn type skills and quirky illustration style. We have featured her you, me, we t-shirt before on this blog and recently she took the top spot in the hand drawn typography competition with her 'hey pretty lady' tee.

I asked Lars if she would mind giving us some insight into what makes her tick and just how she became such a talented individual. Good news for us! She said yes!

Which of your tees are you most proud of?

“Prism Party”, I love pastel colours and I'm a fan of slightly nerdy mathematical things & also “Lost your pen?” because I just think its cute, and slightly sad, I feel the plain of it!

How long do you usually spend on a design?

Two hours at the most, it takes me awhile because I don’t have any nifty gadgets like a Wacom, I have to draw things up, scan, photoshop it, print it, then fix things… and so on, which gets frustrating, i tend to lose motivation half way through.

How do you motivate yourself?

As soon as I wake up I drink Chai Tea and It just wakes me up and makes me want to design and do all sorts of things, id say it gives me superpowers.

Were you a creative kid? If so, what’s your earliest creative memory?

Yeh, very creative, a lot more creative than I am now! I used to enter all the competitions in the Sunday Telegraph and goto Art Camps, I won so much stuff, the best thing I ever won was 100 boxes of The Simpsons Instant Macaroni, I can still taste it.

What creative skill would you most like to have?

I would love to be able to draw well, all my drawings are more like primary school scribbles rather than illustrations, so im thinking of taking some drawing classes

What’s your pet design/illustration hate?

Seeing people post “designs” that look like they were pasted together on paint. And these days im getting a bit tired of seeing polaroid inspired things, don’t get me wrong I love them, I have my own stash, but its become SO popular that in my eyes its lost its novelty and its sense of nostalgia.

If you could pick one person to have as a mentor, who would it be?

Reg Mombassa would be fun just because he is such an icon here in Australia, and he has a sense of humor in his art.

Any advice for aspiring illustrators or designers?

If you are having creative block... just do whatever first comes into your head, doesn’t matter if its silly. And everything around you can be inspiration!

Sounds like good advice to me. A big thanks to Lars for the chat. We can't wait to see more of her work on the bubble soon!