Voting has now ended. See the results here!

It's finally time to cast your vote for your top pick in the 2010 Spring Bento Contest!

After days of deliberation, Mook of FrenchBento, Thomas and Erico of Bento&co and I have finally assembled our list of our favorites from the 156 fantastic entries from all over the world for the Spring 2010 Bento Contest! Now...we did announce that we, the judges, would choose the top 10, but there were so many wonderful bentos entered that we just could not decide on just 10. So, we have chosen our top 15.

Here is a slide show of our 15 choices. You can also see the photos in this Flickr set (they are tagged "N15" by Thomas).

Now it's your very difficult task to choose your favorite! The top 10 vote getters will receive some fabulous prizes, courtesy of Bento&co. (A full description of the prizes is in the contest announcement post, and there's a picture of the Shokado bento that the first place winner will get (besides the gift certificate!) in Thomas's post).

Important! Your vote must be in on or before April 11, 2010.

Use the form below to vote for your favorite bento (I know, it's hard!) You may only vote one time for one bento. I've provided links to each entry (clicking on them will open the appropriate flickr page in a new window) in the poll form, with a short description.

Note: The order of the photos in the slide show and the photo set are different from the order they are listed in the poll form due to some quirks of the polling system, so when you're casting your vote please check the number of the bento (e.g. 101, 84, etc.)

All the contest entries, and my own criteria for choosing the top 10 15

Check out all 156 of the bentos entered in the contest in this Flickr set, or see the slide show below.

Do you agree or disagree with our choices? The three judges didn't agree all the time ^_^; but we are happy with our final 15. Personally, I chose my favorites based on these criteria, more or less in order of importance:

• Did the bento make me go "mmm, I want to eat that!"
• Did the bento look healthy and well balanced?
• How imaginatively did the bentoist execute the theme of Spring?
• The workmanship and skill, not to mention the effort, displayed in making the bento (This last criteria was a factor for me when choosing between very similar bentos, for example)

There were also three entries from very young bentoists! Here's Lydia's bento (she's 10 years old), Elsa's bento (she's 12 now but made the bento when she was 11), and Corentin's bento (she's 12). It's great to see kids getting involved in bento making too.

Overall, the skills and imagination displayed in all of the entries were just amazing. That's why it was so difficult to choose just a few from them. Congratulations to all of the entrants for a fantastic job!

Anyway, please go and comment on the entries on Flickr, or here...and most importantly, get your vote in before April 11!

Voting has now ended. See the results here!