I’ve been emailing the winners of Tee vs. Tee’s on-going contest. On the first day I sent out a batch saying, in short: “You’ve won! Please reply and I’ll send you a code.” Then I sat back in my chair, knowing I had just made a bunch of people smile.

And then nobody replied.

I suppose it was the result of spam blockers, fake email addresses, and/or the skeptical eye of some recipients, but whatever it was I now knew giving away free stuff wasn’t going to be the walk in the park I had expected.

But I pushed on. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. So I emailed another batch. And another. And eventually, against the odds, I succeeded in giving away all the free gift certificates.

Congratulations to our winners: bermey, ceanders, Nyx, AnnieDoodles, torn8686, funblondie2008, alche, newlyunlabeled, and devioussam.

If you did win but don’t yet know it, you can scrounge around in your spam folders and less-used email accounts. Reply to that email and I’ll find you a gift certificate somewhere.

If you didn’t win, don’t worry. The contest is on-going… just keep adding shirts to your favorites.

Thanks again to these wonderful companies: Threadless, No Star Clothing, SplitReason, Valio Style, and Buzzy Multimedia.

Just kidding. You can now browse shirts by tags on Tee vs. Tee. Personally I love the Star Wars shirts, and Tetris too. What are you interested in? How about the evolution of man, or maybe you just can’t find a t-shirt with a heart on it.

I’m only about half done tagging shirts, but since my secret tags page was somehow discovered and then stumbled I guess the cat’s out of the bag.

Now that I’ve removed all the pressure, go find some fun shirts.

The world of t-shirts is like any art: there are some masterpieces, but there are a lot more copies, parodies, tributes and all kinds of trends. Every other Threadless submission uses gold foil, glow-in-the-dark ink, or something fuzzy. And there are the clichés. The I (heart) whatever, the smiley face, Che, skulls, robots, and the ironic Jesus… (all cataloged for us in The Ultimate T Shirt). This week SEIBEI feels ripped off, T addict has spotted a bear trend, and I realized every idea I’ve had for a shirt has been done before.

For example, I thought it’d be fun to have a t-shirt on a t-shirt. I guess I should have known that would have already been done.

A pair of designers calling themselves shikisai takes this simple idea one step further and adds a real tag to the printed shirt.

They have a whole line of black-on-white illustrations with attached objects. I really love the Venetian blind shirt. The draw string is a real string that pulls the shirt up.

Let’s just be happy that between all the hackneyed McLovins and Vote for Pedros there’s a delightful t-shirt that can reveal your navel at will.

It’s here, the first peek into which shirts are the best fighters on Tee vs. Tee. It’s called the Leaderboard. We have enough votes so it’s not a complete farce, but I’m sure we’re going to see some tough competition for the top spots.

I’ve also added a very-necessary categories option. Choose from All, Funny, Artsy, and Indie for now, but many more to come.

The Indie category includes shirts by smaller shops, like Fantastic Bonanza. This means Threadless isn’t in the Indie category, even though a case could be made for its inclusion. Hey, everyone already knows Threadless, right?

I should take this chance to mention my friend’s Analog tee (pictured) from his new hip hop label, Beats Broke. Check it out.

Or one in a million, I guess. What I’m trying to say is, Tee vs. Tee now has 2,000 shirts from 40 or so shirt companies. I don’t know if this meets my “steady pace” promise, but it does provide hours of entertainment for visitors.

Yes, we have the big names like Threadless and Busted Tees, but we also have a lot of the little guys, too. Like Let’s Be Awesome, a new adult line from the makers of Fooey.

So I’m sure you’ll come across some cool shirts you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

BTW, I’ve found a lot of these smaller shirt companies in the archives of some hard-working t-shirt blogs. Just to mention a few, there’s Fantastic Blognanza, Troundup, Tcritic, and Shirtlog. Check ‘em out if you haven’t.

Have a lot of old or neglected shirts?

Well, why not turn them into underwear, boxers, tank tops, skirts, shopping (or laundry?) bags, knapsacks, quilts, braided rugs, or about 100 other things. (Unless you’re lazy like me, in which case you can just cut them up into rags.)

If you’d rather personalize your shirt, you can add ruffles, lace, crunches, ribbons, and all kinds of girly stuff.

Scoot yourself on over to Tcritic’s 5 ideas for recycling your t-shirts for details.

The thing pictured is called a Green Tee Bag, not to be confused with a green tea bag.

I’ll be adding features in the coming days. If you have suggestions, let me know.

The site also has just the bare minimum of t-shirts, which is around 500. I’ll be adding more shirts at a steady pace.