It was a long, ridiculously hard battle. I was absolutely thrilled by the sheer volume of cake labored over, constructed with blood, sweat and frosting. You guys REALLY rocked out, and blew me away!

(I shudder to think of the sheer weight of all the cakes consumed in this... Oh dear...)
How'd we go about judging? Simple. I asked a panel of 10 really cool people (including 5 Threadless staff) to submit their top 5 entries. I asked them to judge based on pure execution and awesomeness, and showed the original challenge. I used a point system, with 5 points for first place and 1 point for 5th place.

Given that, I was SHOCKED that 8 out of 10 people all voted for the SAME first place cake! Something about it just really grab everyone's eye. (The two who didn't give it first place awarded it second place!)

So, without further adieu, here are your winners of the 2007 Threadcakes Awesome Contest:

1. Insomnia by vapidintuition
2. Chinese Peaches by Ytfelmi
3. Loch Ness Imposter by connie
4. Snack (2) by Stephanie
   Sail the High Trees by Ytfelmi
   (Omitted because Ytfelmi took 2nd place!)
5. Lions Are Smarter Than I Am by lucretia mott

Points Breakdown:
Insomnia: 48
Chinese Peaches (3): 21
Loch Ness Imposter (2): 17
Sail the High Trees (2): 9
Snack (2): 8
Lions: 7
Wormfood: 6
Destroy NYC: 6
Dark Side (1): 5
Piece of Meat: 4
Moby: 4
Geology: 3
Pandamonium (WITH FIRE): 3
War & Peas (2): 2
This Is Not A Pipe: 2
Inside You (1): 1
Good Intentions: 1
Et Cetera (2): 1
They're Their There: 1
Cookie Loves Milk: 1

On April 6th, 2007, we launched the first-ever Loves Threadless Cake Contest.

The premise is pretty simple: Bake a cake, and decorate it to match your favorite Threadless shirt design:

I like cake. You like cake. Cake cake cake. Bake us a cake of your best interpretation of your absolute favoritest Threadless design. Be crazy creative, if you’re good with cake. Make a straight up decorated design or whatever your take is on certain design elements. Send us a pic (or several, preferred) of your finished creation. Take a few of the process, too. Hell, even if you suck at baking, the absolute worst thing that happens is you eat cake. And that’s probably the best absolute worst thing *ever*.

Inspiration abounds and you're sure to have a great time, win or lose. Engadget did a similar contest to great result, and while we may not be giving away a computer, click Prizes up above to see what you can win.

Threadless has graciously offered to sponsor the first place prize:

• A 12-Club Membership and a pile of crazy fun from the Threadless Junk Drawer®­. (Dude, that’s like $200.50 worth of awesome prizes and rare shirts!)
• Second prize: A $50 Threadless Gift Certificate
• Third prize: A $25 Gift Certificate
• And, if we can convince Bree, a random/fun Threadless shirt-pillow or shirt-tote.

1. Bake a kick-ass, tasty cake. Decorate. (Multiple entries ARE allowed! Just send them separately!)
2. Send me an email to cakes [at] lovesthreadless [dot] com (You gotta type those out, kids.)
3. Tell me what design you're caking (I'd prefer printed designs only, but if you absolutely LOVE a certain sub, cake away!)
4. Attach your cake pics, preferably in jpeg format and name them after your Threadless account (or your name, if you want)
5. Include your real name somewhere
6. Submit them to me before Sunday, April 29th, 11:59pm PST. Friday, April 20th April 29th. (Per Vindiemiatrix's request, I've bumped it to three weeks. This means no last-minute extensions, though!). (I decided giving the full weekend only made sense.)
7. No photoshops! (Not that it'd be particularly easy or subtle.) I'll be publishing all the submitted designs to a gallery when the competition is over!
8. Take lots of pics! Pics are free! Pics of the process, several of the finished product, you eating cake, etc. The more pics, the better! (If you win, I'll be asking for pics of you making cake so I know you didn't frost cardboard!)
9. Send as many as you want! Uncompressed or what have you! PLEASE make sure you take a lot of close-up pics if there is a lot of detail, or, alternatively, VERY high resolution pics. If you're spending the time on the detail of a cake, please take a minute to make sure I can see it pretty well!
10. Indicate if you want to have your entry appear in the Threadcakes gallery, before the competition ends.
11. Cake cake cake cake cake

Don't forget to take pics of the process. Hell, blog about it. Cake is fun!

• Can I send multiple entries?
  Yes! Just submit them in separate emails!
• What about cupcakes/pancakes/crabcakes/othercakes?
  Let's keep it to breakfast and dessert cakes, but keep in mind, you'll likely have a better shot with a regular, awesome cake.
• Does it have to be an exact replica of the design?
  Not at all. Focus on an element you like, go into great detail, make an abstract, or whatever. Have fun with it. Just make sure you let me know what design you're caking.
• Can it be an ice cream cake?
  See above. Yes.
• Will my cake show up in the gallery?
  Thus far, I'm asking people to indicate to me if they want their design showing up here before the competition ends. It'll end up here afterwards no matter what, but if you're crazy-paranoid/protective of your awesome cake, let me know and it won't appear here until after the competition ends.
• How do I enter?
  Seriously? That's to your right, just a bit.
• Does everything have to be edible?
  We'd definitely prefer it that way, but we're allowing use of non-edible elements for structural support only. "Nearly all" of the design needs to be edible.
• Do you mind how many pictures I send you? Or in what format?
  Keep them JPEG, but don't worry about size or count. Send as many as you can. Take as many as you can!
• Can we blog about this?
  Of course. If you blog on Threadless, link me in your entry, and I'll link your gallery shot to the blog.

[4/24/07] More cakes! Some folks have even organized a Cake Decorating Party with great results. You still have time to do the same!
[4/22/07] I've moved the due date to Sunday, April 29th, 2007 @ 11:59p PST. This will give you a whole extra weekend to break free and bake cakes!
[4/19/07] Got Dugg, front page, slammed with several 25,000 hits in under three hours. Relocated to Threadless' server cluster, because they were awesome. Back to our dev server for now. If it happens to make top 10, we'll have to switch back...
[4/17/07] Even more cakes, and some thumbnails of the product pics. Check out the links beneath each gallery pic, when you expand it!
[4/14/07] More cakes!
[4/14/07] Added a Threadcakes RSS feed. Subscribe right now!
[4/14/07] New cake: Funkalicious by BrandonB11 & levemelone
[4/12/07] Added a new cake: Inside You by squeegebeckenheim
[4/11/07] Launched Threadcakes.com with a slightly better design.