Calling future fashion designers: Get your start early with the Fashion Playtes design contest

I've always been a fan of contests that encourage creativity in kids whether it's creating recipes, designing a Google Doodle, a kids' t-shirt or even a diorama made entirely of Peeps. And now there's one more contest made just for those future fashion designers out there. And what's more, I get to be a judge!

 

As my oldest girl hits 7 and a half as she'll tell you, we're starting to dabble in the world of Fashion Playtes, which lets tween and teen girls start from a basic dress, tee, or even doll outfit, then add trim and a design until they make it their own.

As you can imagine, the designing, trashing, then re-designing is a ridiculous amount of fun for for her. Maybe even more so than wearing the final product (though that's cool too). So I love that now Fashion Playtes is holding a Simple2Swag contest that lets kids go beyond any limitations of the FP offerings and embellish their own Alex Dress--one of my favorites--from their own imaginations.

Submit a drawing, photo, computer rendering...whatever it takes to show us your creativity. Your kid could win one of three $50 FP gift cards, and one grand prize winner will be featured on the site. Yep, put that on the RISD application in a few years.

Just looking at the entries so far is so much fun--I hope if you've got a talented artist/designer in the family you'll encourage them to enter. Boy or girl, by the way.

I mean, last I checked, there were more than a couple of male designers out there with some degree of success. -Liz

Enter the Simple2Swag contest from Fashion Playtes before 1/30/13. Official rules are on the site. Good luck!

[images above are from the current crop of entries and are the property of their respective creators,]

Find More: Getting crafty, Kids Clothing, Tweens + Big Kids