Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll regarding new merch ideas! Since a lot of people seemed to be interested in helping with designs, I decided to have a contest to see what you guys can do.

I’m looking to have one or two t-shirts, one or two posters, and a field bag (like this) printed, so there are plenty of opportunities for winners. Here are the requirements for submissions:

1. T-shirt or field bag submissions must be a high quality, 1-color design. I’m going to need it in black, but feel free to also send me proofs of what color ink and background you think would look best! Poster designs can be full-color, and will be printed on white 11″ x 17″ paper.
2. The winner of the poll was “Suffering from Post-Potter Depression”, with “Won’t you be in nerdfighterlike with me?” in second place, “Lauren Fairweather is my patronus” in third and a drawing of a ukulele in fourth. I’m most likely to pick one design for each of these ideas, so you are welcome to choose one of those to design or to come up with your own original idea. Feel free to combine them as well… for example, I think that the “Lauren Fairweather is my patronus” design would look cool with a ukulele on it.
3. Each design should say “Lauren Fairweather” somewhere on it.
4. My printer did not specify last time if they preferred a certain file format, but if you could send me a jpeg for contest viewing and selection purposes, that would be awesome. If you win, I’ll be contacting you and asking for a vector file or a high res file of some sort.
5. Email your design to laurenmyrtle@yahoo.com by February 28th. You can submit as many designs as you want.

Prizes!
-The physical merch item with your design on it once it is printed.
-Your choice of 10 buttons, which you can see on the Store page.
-A copy of “Bathroom Acoustics”, the a cappella Moaning Myrtles EP, only available through the EP of the month club or from me directly.

If you need some kind of inspiration or direction, I’m really into hand-drawn, sketched-looking indie rock-type designs at the moment. I also like designs with nature-inspired themes to them, with branches and leaves and birds.

Note about potential Nerdfighterlike designs: I am fully aware that DFTBA made a shirt that has my song lyric on it. I had been planning to do a shirt like this before they did, but stopped once theirs was made. There was enough interest in the poll to make me decide to do one after all, but please keep that in mind when designing yours, because I am most likely to print something that is very different from what they used to sell. You can see that design here, by Morgan E. Johnson.

Thank you guys for your interest! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments, NOT on Twitter, and if you have any artistic friends, pass this contest along! :)