One thing this community isn't short of is creativity around playing with color. Using our pattern tool to make designs for a RYZ shoe helped create more than 1,500 contest entries. As with any contest with so many great entries, choosing an overall winner was near impossible. We used your votes (more than 20,000) and our panel of judges to make the hard decision... and the winner is:

Suwaili by Darkstar

You can Pre-order the COLOURlovers shoe here.

Along with the grand COLOURlovers winner, there was also one original pattern winner:
Polygon Camo by MEKAZOO

This original pattern will be added to our library of patterns for your enjoyment.

Thanks to all our lovers for participating in this great contest. We look forward to working with RYZ more in the future and finding new and interesting ways to use our pattern maker to color your real lives.

RYZ is a very cool design community from our local hood of Portland OR, and we're excited to be doing a joint contest with them around the patterns on our site.  It's easy.  All you have to do is color one of our pattern templates so that it makes an awesome shoe design and you could win $1,000.

For the Love of Patterns, RYZ & COLOURlovers invite you to design the FIRST PATTERN ONLY SHOE to be included in the RYZ Collection.

How To Enter

1. Use the COLOURlovers' Pattern Tool to create the best pattern on the block. (We put all the patterns we can use for this contest in one category in our pattern tool.)

2. Once you have your colors just right, publish the pattern to save it.

3. On the viewing page for your pattern cick the Download the RYZ Show Template button.

4. Save the template to your computer and then upload it on the RYZ site.

You can upload as many patterns as you want, so clear your calendar for the next week until June 30th when submissions end.

Voting begins July 1st and will end July 14th. The winner will be announced July 20th. Check here for more details.

Only 3 designs max. per participant can make it into the final round - the voting cycle. 18 designs will make it into the voting round and only 1 will take home the grand prize - $750 cash and $250 store credit to the RYZ shop - plus free sponsored memberships at COLOURlovers.

You all are just way to talented! Choosing 3 winners from the 1,500 entries was an incredibly difficult task. It actually took more than a few hours to look at all the entries. (You can view all the contest entries here: Photo Color Inspiration with LuckyOliver) So many were creative, interesting and works of art themselves... but in the end we only have enough prizes for 3 winners and here they are:

1st Prize 8GB iPod Touch or $300 via US check or PayPal 50 LuckyOliver tokens

2nd Prize iPod Shuffle or $79 via US check or PayPal 50 LuckyOliver tokens

3rd Prize iTunes Gift Card or $25 via US check or PayPal 25 LuckyOliver tokens

Honorable Entries

Getting 3 from 1,500 was nearly impossible. Along the way we kept trimming the list of palettes we loved down to a smaller number and the palettes below stayed with us for most of the way. Even though they didn't win, we wanted to share a little extra love with these palettes.

LuckyOliver is a growing stock photo marketplace that helps creative people buy and sell images. LuckyOliver's quality, low cost stock photos are used by designers, small businesses, marketers and DIY enthusiasts.

The Contest is Now Closed.

Wow! So many amazing entries. We're now looking at the more than 1,500 entries to find the winners of the contest. We'll be posting the results very soon. Thank you to all who shared some of your color inspiration.

Contest Details:

LuckyOliver.com is a great place to get wonderful stock photos at a good price... and COLOURlovers is a great place to share color ideas and inspiration. With your help we want to showcase some of the great photos on LuckyOliver and also your color loving talents at making color palettes. All you need to do to enter this contest is create a color palette inspired by a photo on LuckyOliver. We know you love sharing your color inspiration with others and now we're giving you the opportunity to win some awesome prizes for doing exactly what you love to do... So crank up your inspiration motors and start sharing the photo and color love.

This content will end March 17th and the winners will be announced on both COLOURlovers and LuckyOliver.com. Winners will be selected for the best palettes that captured the spirit / mood of the inspiration photo. Enter early and enter often.

How to Enter:

Step 1

Browse the great images at LuckyOliver.com and choose one that inspires you.

 

Step 2

Save the watermarked photo preview to your computer

 
And Copy the URL to the photo

 

Our friends over at ApartmentTherapy.com are putting their third annual fall colors contest to see who has the most color loving home. Win Up To $2500 from a total of $7500 in prizes to be awarded! - Thanks to subsomatic for reminding us.

How colorful is your home?

WHAT: Our Fall Colors Contest is a contest for all color lovers. We're looking for the boldest, most beautiful, most colorful home in the world.

WHY: Color is a powerful part of interior design, and the cheapest way to change a room, but few feel comfortable using it. To inspire confidence, we're going to share all of the best color homes, tips and sources, worldwide.

I've Got Color! - Fall Colors Contest 2007

So you and I both have something in common, (no, not our great looks & charm)... our love for color! But the sad thing is that not everyone knows about COLOURlovers.com and that is what this contest is all about. We're making this the Summer of COLOURlove!

Contest Closed

This contest is closed and we will be going over all the entries and deciding our winners in the coming week. Even though the contest is over, you can still let others know about COLOURlovers.com.

Objectives

You know why you love this site and you do a better job of explaining it to other creative people than we do... So we want you to reach out to the groups, schools, clubs, gangs you roll with and tell them why they should be a member here at COLOURlovers. It could be writing a blog entry about the site... hand knitting a COLOURlovers scarf and wearing it around... throwing a COLOURlovers party... naming your next child COLOURlover... putting up COLOURlovers posters around your town... Use your imagination and take photos of anything you can easily link us to. Post your photos someplace like www.Flickr.com and link us to your creative expression.