The Holidaze

So I feel funny. Not a sick funny or an excited funny, but just funny. For some reason the end of this semester has come as kind of a surprise to me. I don't remember ever wanting the end of a semester to come this badly. Now that it's over I have nothing to worry about except not foundering on cookies and pie and keeping up with the orders from TealTown. We had another order yesterday (prompting me to drive the hour back home from my parents house) so I'm thinking that perhaps we'll keep up a decent sales rate even after Christmas, which would be nice.

I've done a massive amount of printing in the last week and I'm glad that every time I print a shirt I'm entertained and it makes me proud to see them come out. We've even got some info on a non profit organization that is looking for some clothing and we're shipping out a box full of shirts and scarves to them. Our own little corporation is starting to plump up.

Unfortunately I'm afraid I might plump up with it.

Stupid cookies.

Nuff said

Please Click to Enlarge

We came, we saw, we conquered

Or at least we tried. Finals are okay so far, Etsy on the other hand is fantastic. Yet another nice addition to our growing Etsy resume. The Dad Gift Guide has featured our Head Case shirt as one of the great gifts for Dad. We're honored. Good thing I had nothing to do and decided to browse through the Guides to kill some time. In other news, it is 70 degrees on December 11th, a feat for the ages, and we've got to go do something to take advantage of the weather. I have no idea what that is, but we'll think of something. Then I'll spend tonight either studying for my exam tomorrow, or avoiding studying for my exam tomorrow. We're playing that one by ear.

Sweden is good for money and chocolate

I printed up the shirt we sold to a lady in Sweden today. I'm excited to send it out, not so excited to go to the post office.

I took my online exam today, the first of 2 take home exams. It's nice having an exam you can take home and go over on your own time schedule. My next exam is tomorrow at 5PM, which I'm not sure how I feel about. I'm just going to study for a while right before I go so that might be nice that it's later in the day. Another on Wednesday and turning in a takehome on Friday. So all in all the week is nicely spaced out and won't be too bad.

I don't really feel like doing much. It's that end of the semester slump (which lasted all semester). I have plenty to do, I still need to make a custom shirt for a customer and print that up, but she's in Canada until Christmas and wants it just shipped to her parents house so that can wait until the other stuff is done. I spend a lot of time in the chat rooms on Etsy, just shootin the breeze and hoping for some exposure.

Tomorrow we've got business cards arriving, which is super sweet. Sam posted the pics on her blog. I think she's happy with them, which is good because a lot of the time she dislikes her own work, but this time she knows its good. I can't wait to hand them out to someone, but at the same time I don't want to just give them away because they're so sweet.

I've been trying to think of some cool freebies to throw in with our packages but I'm not coming up with anything. It's not like I can afford to send a free shirt out. If we can keep the business up to this level we'll be able to get something nice to go along with our stuff, which will be yet another milestone.

And that's pretty much it for now. Too much thinking and exams and whatnot doesn't lend for very interesting material

Tote this

Sam wants to try to start sewing, and she's thinking about making some tote style bags. So I picked up a premade blank one to see how printing would work. I think it'll be fine but I'm not sure I made enough passes at this one. But DelorisKaren wants to see it so this post is to show her. I think it's pretty cool.

Proof positive

Eat it. No, really do. It was pretty good!

International mystery man

The other day I received our first order from out of the states. Luckily it was someone I've talked to on several occasions so they were patient enough to wait for the shipping to be changed to reflect an international shipping price.

And since we've had a few convos about international shipping in the past (where people promptly stopped conversing with me after I basically told them I had no idea how much it would cost) I decided to break down and do the dirty work to figure out international shipping costs.

Turns out it wasn't that hard. USPS offers a nice online calculation that is accurate. I checked the calculation page before shipping to Canada and it was spot on with what I was charged at the post office. You can find that page here. It's pretty standard to do US, Canada and Everywhere Else. For reference our packages for 1 shit round up to 7oz, mailed in a manila envelope. Our shipping to Canada is about 30 cents more than domestic US, and Everywhere Else is less than double domestic. I checked in the UK, Australia, Brazil and Russia and they all came up the same.

So here's to the weakness of the dollar. Exports are much cheaper these days so hop to it international buyers. It's only a matter of time till we bust out a whole bunch more gold and our dollar goes up. At least that's what we're hoping.

Now for our Featured Presentation

How privileged are we? Today we're being featured on the blog of QuirkynBerkeley and as far as I know that is the first blog that we've been featured on. I'm glad that we got this opportunity, and that Quirky enjoyed our stuff enough to post it to her site.

I was supposed to write up some info for her, but Sam and I spent 10, count them, 10 hours in the Architecture studio with our 2 partners building a 12 foot bridge. But not only a 12 foot bridge, a 12 foot foot bridge. Our partner Lauren must successfully negotiate her way across the bridge without it tearing into pieces. An interesting proposition considering two massive parts broke while we were trying to put it together. It actually turned out to be kind of fun for me. It was neat to see our idea come together, we did something completely different from any other group, and our team is full of nice people - and funny to. I'll post some pictures of the bridge later, they're e-mailing them to me tomorrow.

But for now, I'm going to go to bed. It's been a long day - the bridge, made and shipped out 3 shirts, our first international package to Canada. I'm beat, although I am tempted to jump in the chat room real quick. But no, that would be a bad idea.

My new addiction

Hollah out to Chat Room Red. I went in last night not knowing what to expect and I came out laughing and excited to go back soon. Some of the same people are in there every day, paperzombieink is apparently in there all day, every day. I left for hours at a time and I would come back and she was still there, typing up a storm and whatnot. Nice people and I was happy to meet them. Not to mention that many people in the chat seemed to love our designs, at one point the page was flooded with images of our shirts. Needless to say (because I've been saying it for days now) I'm excited that people really do like our stuff. As you can see just because your item shows up in the chat doesn't necessarily dictate that the conversation will surround your work... or touch on it at all, really.

Through the course of chatting Ancienet Artizen contacted me to do some OOAK work. The object is to come up with an original shirt based on Ancient Artizen's artwork to be worn at exhibitions and art shows. It's a great idea and I'm excited to work on it. I got ahold of the piece I'll be working with and it is a style I've never experimented with before. Very tribal and mystical, as you can see that is a theme in their store. That's going to be a good project that allows for a lot of creativity on both parts.

In other news, the Secretary of the State of Ohio got our paperwork. We just received notification of the acceptance of our official business name: Teal Town Ink. And here's the proof, go here and search for Teal Town and viola! Wait, isn't that the name of a musical instrument... do they spell it the same way? Ah crap, you get the idea.

Thank God for complaining

A lot of people have been upset over the Gift Guides because they feel that it is not inclusive enough, or that it isn't as democratic as it should be. I didn't have much of an opinion on the subject. I searched for our items in the different categories I thought we would appear in and found nothing. If anything I was worried that our stuff wasn't up to snuff.

Well all of the complaining made me go through the guides again. I went through more of them, thinking that I looked in the wrong area. Then I noticed the wedding category, and being recently married I thought that was a really interesting idea so I took a look, and guess what.

Well laa-dee-frickin'-da. Of all the things, we're a part of the wedding list? Wow, to think that someone liked our curtains enough to suggest they be given as a wedding present is pretty cool. I would write more but I'm really bored and I have some work to do so I had better get it done.

Oh snap!

I took a new approach on the Promotion forum today. My post asked for people to post items that were better than my own. I went for the whole playground style teasing, like when you used to challenge the slowest girl in school to races all the time because deep down you really liked her. The one person who did post any items posted their own items, which I think voids their entry. My favorite response so far was most certainly this:


No one has ever said that to me. And I never realized how much I wanted someone to say that to me until just now.

That lovin' feeling

Yesterday was fantastic. Our Etsy shop got so much love that I can hardly believe it.

4 sales in 24 hours, 3 convos regarding someone interested in purchasing an item or setting up a custom order, 1 email regarding a custom order setup, nice amount of views on our new designs, almost 30 new people marked us as a favorite, and we're now up to 99 total hearts.

Huge, I tell you, huge. It's nice to the work we've done over the past few months really start to interest people. All of this stuff over the last two or three days proves that our first few sales weren't a fluke, people are interested, and that feels great. Hopefully this isn't just a Holiday rush, but even if it is I think I'm okay with that.

Northern American Sales as of 11/30/2007

Keep your head up

I'm trying to keep my head about me, but I'm pretty damn excited. Our new designs have taken off like a rocket ship. We put our Edgar Allan Poe, Antique Sewing Machine, Illustrated Bird and Head Case shirts online and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

The views on those shirts has gone up steadily and quickly, landing us with nearly 100 in a day on the Illustrated Bird shirt. The thing is no one had a chance to heart it because it sold so quickly. Within 24 hours of placing the shirt online we sold 3. It's fantastic, our best day on record and just the moral boost I needed.

I hit the forums hard the last few days, promoting and posting in every forum category and shootin the breeze with the good people of Etsy. And I'm thinking that it paid off. Not only did I get some decent advice on where to go to ship a large package and get to demonstrate a little of my scientific knowledge, but we got a lot of exposure and it translated directly into sales.

So here's an image of the newest design, Head Case. Probably one of the most detailed and nicest looking images I've printed to date. Actually this isn't as detailed as the original because the mesh I use to custom make my screens has too large of a gauge to hold onto the really fine lines around the mouth, but I compared the shirt print to the original and I like the shirt better. It's cleaner and doesn't look quite so creepy with all the muscle texture the original image had.

I'm just really excited right now. Who ever thought that all of this would come out of a simple thought many years ago. "I wish I could make my own shirts." And years later I discover the art of screen printing, decide to not just let this be one of the things I think about but never do. Now I'm not only doing it, but it's paying for itself, which means I can keep doing it!

The moral of the story: follow your dreams. Or something like that.

Something unusual, something strange - called from nothing at all.

Inspired by my life and favorite of Damien Rice's songs. "I'm not a miracle, you're not a saint. Just another soldier on a road to nowhere."

In the song, titled Amie, he asks Amie to sit and tell him hopeful stories of the past. He says "tell 'em like you still believe, at the end of the century there's a place for you and me." If I didn't have Samantha I would undoubtedly be lost. It's hard enough to stay awake with a light in my life like her. Without that I'd have no faith in people, especially not myself.

I love Damien Rice and hate him at the same time. I tried to write music like he does a long time ago and like most amateurs strumming in their bedroom I couldn't strike upon anything near his magnitude. Sam doesn't really like him, and perhaps that makes this an inappropriate tribute, but a tribute nonetheless.

Need I say more?

Taaaa daaaaa!

700 views, it seems so magical.

I survived Thanksgiving and all I got was this lousy money

Home again, home again. Jiggity jig.

Traveled a few hours to see Sam's extended family for Thanksgiving, which was nice. Except for when we were about 40 minutes away the car broke down, leaving us on the side of a back country road. We were able to get it closer to town, thanks to Sam's dad, who scares cars so badly they work for him. We had to leave it overnight and then Sam's parents went out to get it the next day, and lo-and-behold all it needed was gas.

I don't care what she says, Sam's mother had no idea that was the problem. No idea. How could she possibly have any idea? Actually, I know the answer to that. She didn't. At all.

In other news I was able to get back in the studio and print up some more shirts. We have 5 more designs coming and they all look fantastic.

While at the in-law's we got some extra mo-lahs and I sent out the application and check to officially register our business in the State of Ohio. Soon we'll be doing business under our official name: Teal Town Ink. I'm pretty excited about all this, and you should be too, because once that is done we'll be churning out shirts like there's no tomorrow. And, God willing, making enough money to keep us from going into debt. Woot!

Take a gander at this beauty, the Illustrated Bird. I listed it last night and already got one inquiry into size measurements - the fastest response to any of our designs yet. I can't wait to get the other shirts online. I predict an explosion of interest in TealTown over the next few days.

And by all means, let it come. I need to get into hard core promoting mode again. I slacked off in everything over the last month or so. Promotion, production, eating, sleeping, exercising, school, Guitar Hero. But those few days off really got me excited about having a month off for Winter Break. Although I'm not sure how to run this business and be on break at the same time. I'll just have to make a temporary studio in my parent's basement. Because, you know, all explosive interest in TealTown... and whatnot.

Gobble

This is nuts. There's no reason it should be Thanksgiving already. I don't think I've ever been upset about a Holiday, but this is just out of control. It feels like it should be Halloween, not turkey day.

I guess I'll just cope with copious amounts of stuffing, triptophan and naps.

Sam and I built 4 screens tonight in preparation for what I just decided to call our "design explosion." We have 6 new designs coming soon, and I'm excited about all of them. We are also working on a line of books - sketchbooks, notebooks, journals and the like - that are going to feature the face of a famous artisan. I want to correspond the book to the artist or author, for example Hemingway will appear on a small, pocket sized journal. I'd like to print on Moleskin journals, but the cost would be excessive. Dali goes on a sketch book and Van Gogh onto a watercolor book. Something like that.

But we aren't even prepared for that yet. Sam's just started working on the portraits today and we're taking a few days off for Thanksgiving.

Here are 3 new designs, feel free to vote for your favorite. You better believe there's big things coming.

Pineapple Paraphanalia

It's been so long since we've added anything new to our Etsy shop. It felt good to get a new design up.

I put out a call for ideas on the forums and had a great response. The pineapple idea came from Didileo, a seller of some nice handbags.

Sam and I both loved the idea of just a pineapple, loud and proud on a shirt. I made the example shirt for Sam, she requested white on black and I think it turned out fantastically.

I recently broke down and bought some more expensive transparencies with a highly textured side. They are specially made to soak up ink from inkjet printers and man do they work. Now we're going to be able to do some more detailed work without worrying about the transparencies smudging all over the place.

We also had some interest in our services for printing other people's designs. Some people contacted us after my response to a forum post about where to get reasonably priced screen printing done. Now, in order to deal with wholesale shirt sellers we have to go through the Feds and then the State to get a vendor's license, which isn't difficult but will cost about $75.

That is by no stretch of the imagination a large amount of money. But things haven't been to great financially around here since I quit my job. Although things weren't financially great while I was working, either. I'm going to have to ask for someone to invest the money. I know my parents would do it. Sam's would too. I could probably even get a friend of mine to do it, but I feel like I shouldn't have to.

I'm not opposed to it. I just don't want to stir up a bunch of questions with my parents. Questions usually end in answers, and I don't want to lie. Therefore that means I may have to own up to quitting my job. And that won't go over very well. I don't expect an explosion over it but, in our current situation, it was kind of short sighted of me.

But as most people know, my vision hasn't even been that great. It'll work out. I just need to get the license and some prices to these peeps before they drift off over the intrawebs and I never hear from them again.

Person First Approach

I'm currently taking a Speech Pathology class. My professor is a passionate, well educated and interesting person - everything that goes into a great teacher.

That's it. What? Were you expecting a big "But..."?

She believes that hands on is a good way to go, so she gave everyone in class a pair of industrial strength earplugs and asked us to be deaf for a day. I just finished my paper on my experience and I'll have to say it was one of the most interesting projects I've done in my college career thus far.

You have no idea how much noise your tongue makes when you speak, or how loud the sound of your feet hitting pavement is as it echoes around inside your head. I was beyond "impaired," I was nearly deaf. I practiced putting the plugs in and got really good at it, apparently, because I could barely hear anything. I heard odd things, like the crinckling of a plastic bag, or the percussion of Christmas music in Kohl's, but not the voices or foot steps of people all around me.

And interestingly enough, I found myself hiding. I avoided people, walked in a large radius around strangers, followed closely behind my mom, who has taught disabled people most of her life, including the blind and deaf. She didn't realize that she was using simple sign language with me, in which I have no training. We were looking through shirts and I quickly picked up on the sign for small, as she flipped through discount racks, holding up a shirt and pinching her fingers together - asking me to find that shirt in a smaller size.

I could write much more about it. It was extremely interesting and disconcerting at the same time. I only spent one fourth of the time I was supposed to with the ear plugs in, but that was more than I could stand. Being able to take them out was so distracting. I spent quite a while thinking about just stopping, pulling them out and being back to normal. I can't imagine not having that option.

The distinct ring of silence would be enough to drive a person mad.

Danny Boy, Don't be afraid to miss the bus or misbehave

I wake up with songs in my head. The earlier I wake up, the longer the song is in there, reverberating over the folds of my brain, echoing off the bones of my skull. It is always a vaguely familiar song. Never one I know all the words to. I just keep repeating a line again and again.

So I put on my clothes and I go to class, and the routines of my day replace the repetitions of my mornings.

Good morning.

Turning to the Minority

I've been having a hard time coming up with new ideas lately, so I thought I would see if any Etsyians had an idea for a shirt they'd like to have.

I posted on the forums, asking for ideas and saying that if someone gave me an idea I actually used, I would give them the credit for the original idea. Man, was that a good idea. Over 2 hours, 163 posts and 17 pages later I had a whole new set of designs. The funny thing was that quite a few of the ideas people mentioned were either ones we currently have for sale or ideas that I have in my sketch book.

Simple is the idea. People want simple, everyday objects. Of course some people want a sparrow riding a jackalope while playing a Moog.

Which I thought was just silly... until I started working on it. The Moog part is a little much, but this is a pretty decent desing nonetheless.

Turning to the Masses

There's something genuinely fun about having an online shop. Creating things and watching as people choose them as a favorite item. But there's also something to be said about making money.

I said that I would sell shirts to perpetuate my hobby. If I sold some shirts online, great, I'd be able to keep making shirts for myself and hopefully sell a couple of those too. It would be an endless cycle. I think my cycle needs a little oil.

Sam and I threw some ideas around with my parents and between ourselves and we've come up with some solid ideas.

My mom works in an elementary school back home, and she's tired of the same old T-Shirts every year with the same old eagle head and the same old text. She wants us to create some new, fresh ideas and propose them to the student body. It's win win - we get business and the kids get quality shirts that are not only unique, but handmade. Okay, so a 3rd grader might not appreciate that, but when they're still wearing that shirt their Senior year, they'll all be talking about how awesome that shirt is.

Next idea: Green Beer Day. It's something of a tradition around here. In fact, its a way of life for many Miami University students. The Thursday before spring break, the bars open at 5:30AM with a seemingly unlimited supply of Green colored beer, and the student body does its damnedest to make sure all that beer is gone by closing time Friday morning. And what happens to be almost as important as the beer on Green Beer Day? Why, Green Beer Day T-shirts, of course. Shirts are the probably the only way anyone can remember having participated in Green Beer Day.
So I've created my design. It's pseudo-pirate themed, because a ninja theme doesn't seem as concrete. I e-mailed it out to my only friend who has a friend other than me. He's the proud owner of a fraternity tattoo and a broken liver. I figure if he likes it, we're golden.

Wait and see appears to be the game. I've never really been good at games.

Hold up

Transparency issues persist, but we will not give up.

It turns out that my thug required 15 transparencies, and I had about 7 left and I wasn't about to go buy another $35+ package of them. So out comes the windex and toilet paper. I spent quite a while scrubbing down old stencils to make enough clean ones for the entire picture. If you print onto a laser printer transparency (the less expensive type) with an inkjet printer, the ink can't actually soak into the paper, which can be a real pain but also handy because the ink wipes off pretty easily no matter how long it has been sitting.

So after a night full of printing we have our suspect all laid out on the floor.

Needs more lens flare, IMO.

I tried to give a feel of the scale of this thing by putting a yard stick next to it in a few photos, but it just looks small no matter what. Notice the gaps in the image, those are the edges of the transparencies, which are standard 8.5" x 11" sheets. But that still doesn't get at the scale of this thug. I only had one option...

To lay down next to it and the yard stick. This is my attempt at the thug pose. I think I'll stick to retail work for now.

You may notice the pink spots - another printer malfunction I can't figure out. I tried to reprint those panels and ended up coloring over them with a sharpie, proving that I did not, in fact, deserve a Needs Improvement grade on my Kindergarten coloring-inside-the-lines evaluation.

While we wait a while for these pages to (kind of) dry I'll have to make the biggest screen that I've ever made. Hopefully I learned all the hard lessons about large screens last time, during the chandelier curtains, including the lesson: if you pull the mesh too tight, the entire screen will bow upward and try to implode on itself.

I'm estimating the size of the screen to be about 48" x 35" It's going to be a blast covering that sucker in emulsion. I bought a whole new jar today, unfortunately the sale at Hobby Lobby was over for screen printing materials so I didn't save 25%. I might cry if it takes half the jar to cover this screen. But, on the bright side, next year's Halloween costume is done. This sucker on a piece of cardboard, a few eye-holes, some string, a pair of sweatpants and viola! Maybe I'll enter this in the Etsy costume contest next year, or parade proudly around showing off my innovative costume.

Or maybe I'll stay inside hiding under my desk from some princesses and fairies looking for candy like I did this year.

I totally feel bad about that.

ThUg4Ly3

My next project is underway, codename: ThUg4Lyf3.

Objective: to screen print curtains and t-shirts with the classic police training paper target.

My father in law first broached the idea a few weeks ago. When I told him we were going ahead with it he seemed half proud and two thirds surprised, leading me to believe that he was joking.

I've been looking all over the internet for the right image. I had this mental picture of the old school Rainbow 6 games, where in the training exercise the baddies would pop up and you would pop them down with your MP5Sd6 with silencer and dot scope attachment (That mental image also landed me with an almost $400 airsoft gun, which I used maybe 10 times).

Apparently those particular targets were created for that game and don't actually exist, however I did find The Thug, which is very similar. In my searches I found an article about the origins of The Thug, and that article lead me to landing the perfect image. I love the internet more every day.

A little tweak in Paint.net (an open source Photoshop knockoff) and we've got our Thug. Next, we throw the Thug into my newest screen printing tool: BlockPosters. That way we can print him out in a large, life size scale and screen print the hell out of him.

Needless to say this is going to take quite a bit of work, and I won't really make any money off of anything I print with this design until I sell quite a few of them. But money's not important to two 20 something married college students planning to go to Ireland for a summer semester. Man, that makes my life sound rough.

Maybe I should take to a life of crime... The Thug makes it look all too easy.

Penn Station sounds delicious

I think I'm addicted to food. We all are I guess, you just can't live without it - can you?!

I eat constantly, usually from about 7 to whenever I go to bed, sometimes that can amount to 7 or more hours.

Maybe constantly is too specific of a word. I.... am not going to write about this anymore. I was starting into a long diatribe about how much I eat. But that's stupid, so I'll write about something that's stupid but on topic.

I can't print. I haven't had any good ideas lately, and the ones I have had - mediocre ones - I haven't been able to work out. I've set up 3 screens, all of which were failures. One was a scarf design for Sam, the other 2 were an attempt at a wall graphic for my desk. I discovered that a lot of my problems recently have stemmed from my emulsion. Bill, the guy who owns the only art supply store here, who is considered a jerk and ripoff by quite a few art students, sold me emulsion that was apparently really old. I chose the newest looking jar, most of it was in old metal paint can style jars with logos for companies that have long since changed their logo.

Well this emulsion is a pain, it washes out after it has been burnt, and the edges of all of my designs look like they are made of torn newspaper. Actually, I could tear a better image out of newspaper.

My printer ran out of ink, which is OK because it won't print my transparencies correctly anyways.

A package I sent to a customer nearly a month ago turned up in my mailbox today, along with an e-mail from said customer, which is odd. They're okay with waiting after they read the message I sent them explaining what happened (I don't know what happened).

Oh, and I was pretty sure my wife had disappeared earlier today. So today has been kind of a strange day. But it'll be okay.

I really need to print something, it helps me focus on one thing. A lot of the time my mind is racing so fast that I can't zero in on one thing to do or remember anything for very long. Which is why I used to enjoy rock climbing so much - you can't focus on anything except what you're doing.

That might explain why I'm perfectly fine doing things like printing, or writing a paper, or setting up my computer when I'm alone. Throw some other people into the mix and I'm thinking about too many things at once again. Therefore I tend to over react.

I pride myself on handling difficult, enigmatic situations with ease and clarity. I just can't remember to replace the trash bag after I take the trash out. Life is made up of all these little compromises.

Custom woes

Had our second custom order request today. Someone is interested in a set of our curtains. I love custom orders, I think its a great part of Etsy. There's plenty of times that I've found something I like in a store and wished it was a different color, a size smaller, or made just slightly different. Our first custom was easy - a Wittenberg on a girl's shirt. That is to say it was easy after I found the shirt, which wasn't easy. (Who knew girls shirts are so hard to buy?)

This order is great. A set of curtains, that means I can actually make some money off of them, use that gigantic screen I made, and have a challenge. The only problem is it might be too much of a challenge. They want royal blue curtains and a white chandelier. Unfortunately my Speedball ink is running low in white, I've never seen a large jar of white for sale because no one sells ink and Speedball isn't that great when it comes to opacity. So there's a chance I do the whole production and use what little ink I have left and then turns out that you can see the blue through it in spots.

Maybe I can talk to Matt (a guy I took some classes with who turns out to be a screen printer and he's done more experimenting with ink than I have) and find a nice opaque white ink.

The worst part: I've been just waiting for someone to express some interest in these curtains, and now that I've got it I feel like it would be too much work.

Which doesn't bode well for doing the production runs its going to take to make over 2 thousand dollars worth of merchandise if we get accepted into the art fair in Cleveland. Eeek!

Pic unrelated. A possible idea for a wall graphic. Another one of those things I thought was funny when I made it and now I'm not so sure about. I do smile when I think about slapping one of these next to an elevator on the sly. I love the idea of people walking by it every day and never noticing.

The all elusive craft fair

I've been trolling the Etsy forums, searching for some insight into how people find out about these amazing craft fairs. What I found was a lot of people who were doing the same thing.

I also found that people take thousands of dollars worth of goods to shows. Unfortunately our items wouldn't do well at your classic craft fair. I'm not sure, but I assume our items appeal to a younger crowd. In a post asking for critiques of our site the most negative comment was "Your description was a cute story but a little long for those of us with old eyes." That made me chuckle. I'm pretty sure if you have old eyes you're not going to want a shirt with a bright orange octopus on it. Maybe a gift, but I don't see many people buying their Holiday gifts on Etsy anyway.

Luckily today I found an "Indie Art Fair." I'm assuming by "indie" we mean young people with blue hair. And that, my friends, is exactly what I need.

Young people with blue hair. I don't need blue hair, although that would be cool.

Off to class. (I swear, Mom.)

The In Crowd

Are people really afraid of their in-laws? Or is that just a stereotype I learned from watching Everybody Loves Raymond? Not that I blame Raymond.

I guess I used to be afraid of them. I'm not sure if they are acting less friggin crazy, or if I'm becoming more friggin crazy.

They came to visit today and we all had an extremely good time. Sam took some family portraits further demonstrating the fact that she really knows what she's doing. We came back here and I spent the rest of the day screen printing. Not because I was trying to avoid them, but because they all were interested. The girls (almost 9 and 11) helped me print them some scarves. Which of course leads us to a new item for TealTown.

We had some nice steak and other miscellaneous dinner items, some nice conversation and we sat around. It's so strange how you can spend all day sitting around and talking. I can't remember a single thing we talked about, but it was great conversation.

I'm so glad that I've cemented my place in this family. No more drifting around feeling like I was intruding, like they were putting up with me just because they had to. I don't feel like I am putting up with them because I have to.

I'm just happy to be married. Everything that has come out of it has made me a better person, even though it apparently makes me sappy.

Just Listed

Octoprints Part Three: Find him a new home.


Here we go again on my own. Going down the only road I've ever...

The finished Octopus design on a Carolina Blue T-Shirt. We threw it up on Etsy. Er... We posted it on Etsy and after about an hour I checked back to see the views. 2. I had 2 views. Which is fantastically crappy. So I quickly threw a link into a forum post, asking people what was up. Are the pictures bad? Mixed reviews ranging from "your pix are awesome" to "it was hard to enjoy the pictures."

I did figure out the trick to getting over 40 views in 5 minutes, though. Post your item link in the forums.

Octoprints: Burning the Octopus and Bringing it to Life

My screen was all emulsified and dried out. (Holy crap emulsified is a real word? It didn't show up as misspelled.)

I laid out my octopus and turned on my makeshift lightbox. I'm going to make a nice lightbox soon, I hope. Finally, a good use for those reference materials - weights to press the screen on top of the transparency.

I chose to use the Cardinal Blue shirt because I can't see an octopus being on anything but blue. The ink is a darker blue that looks really great but honestly I was afraid to do blue on blue - I wanted it to really pop off the shirt, since the design is so simple. It was blue ink vs. white ink. Sam voted for blue ink, and so it was decided.


And of course, like a few or us were talking about on the Etsy forum, the nerve racking part where you actually have to print was kind of touch and go. The details on the octo were so minute that I had a hard time getting the ink through. It took way more force than I expected, and quite a few swipes. The first one I did on Cardinal Blue was only half there, and the first one I did on a girls gray shirt was only half there too.

So what do you do when a print goes wrong?

Freak the fuck out. Check.
Panic. Check.
Make some self deprecating comments. Check.
Take it to the sink, pour detergent on it and scrub like a madman. Check.















Let me tell you. There is nothing more terrifying than orange ink. It washes out of everything, but just seeing it pour into the sink, or all over my hands makes me think that I'll be the color of toxic carrot juice permanently. They used to call me Oompa Loompa in grade school. I can't go through that again.

Living the life

I'm now posting several times a day, be sure to scroll down and check out the post on screen printing below, this one's about my life.

I don't plan on making this blog about just screen printing. It's supposed to be a behind the scenes look at all the things we do, but also behind the scenes of the life of a 20 year old guy married to a 22 year old girl. Yes, yes, I really am only 20 and already married let's take a moment and all gasp together.


*GASP!*

Feel better? I sure do.

Anyway, if you're not into hearing about my life, that's fine just tune in for the printing posts. This one though, is about an incredible opportunity that fell into my lap.

Sam discovered that Miami University offers an IMS (Interdisciplinary Media Studies) minor and thematic sequence. Not only do they offer this and great classes that go along with it, but they offer a 6 week course in Dublin, Ireland, the technology capital of the European Union. And not only is there a course in Dublin, but this course involves students being hired by a huge tech company to work on actually solving some of their complicated business issues. When I say huge, I mean it. We meat with the advisor/professor/guy who runs the show today and he said they are having serious talks with Google.

Our apartment for 6 weeks would be located in the heart of Dublin, the Tech Hub, right down the street from the Guinness brewery, overlooking the river. And Google might pay us to be there to boot.

I have never thought about Ireland before in my entire life, but now I'm afraid I've fallen in love with the place.

The moral of the story? TealTown needs to take off like a rocket ship to pay for our tuition and plane tickets. Go back and read the first post, I owned up to the fact that I would be shamelessly plugging our store. There are no secrets here.

Octoprints: Step 1

The Octopus is an ancient symbol of longevity and success. It is said that the longer the legs of an octopus, the more successful the animal was in its endeavors and the longer its life would last. This is why octopus is often eaten raw as sushi, immediately after the animal is killed - sometimes still squirming. Some people believe that consuming these majestic creatures in this state would allow them to borrow from the octopus's strength.

This, of course, is all BS that I just made up on a whim. It sounds good though. In reality octopuses are pretty much awesome and most everybody knows it. So, in the everlasting spirit of longevity, success and awesomeness I'm creating an Octopus shirt for our Etsy store.

So, luckily I had my original screen, a standard Speedball, clean which meant that I didn't have to make a new one. You see, since business is shotty at best, it makes more sense to make a custom screen then to have to use emulsion remover and take the time to clean a screen each time I want to print, then reapply emulsion and reburn it. Then, lo-and-behold, the second you clean one someone wants one of that design and you've got to trash your newest design and go back. It was turning out to be very wasteful. So I make now own now. I'll go over making your own custom screens in a later post.

Grab the emulsion, screen, squeegee (nope, I don't even use a scoop coater) and spread that gooey green stuff out. Then I popped it into my high tech, lightproof drying "rack" which consists of a stack of cardboard boxes covered with a heavy fleece blanket (another remnant from my semester in Dorsey Hall).
And wait. Maybe grab some dinner from your FANTASTIC chef of a wife, play Guitar Hero III, do whatever you need to do. Once it's dry we move on to Octoprints: Step 2, Burning the Octopus.

To AbbieRoad

A question on the forum at Etsy that I could best illustrate with a picture

You can always let them air dry, but heat setting is fast, furious and helps make the ink permanent on fabrics. Heat gun on the right. A quick search found this one for 12.99 http://jackstoolshed.zoovy.com/product/40411?meta=FRG&utm_source=GBASE&utm_medium=CPC&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

I have a hard time waking up when I know that class is going to put me to sleep.

Mom, in case you're reading this, I did go to class nonetheless. I mean I do go to class. On a regular basis.

As promised I've grabbed Sam's old digital camera and snapped some shots of our "studio," previously a junk room (still a junk room). We will soon be renovating our "studio" to make it more "studious." I'll post the during and after photos as well. Please note Sam in the bottom right, diligently documenting our ideas, a bag of laundry on the left from when I lived in Dorsey Hall my Freshman year and my old man hat hanging on my makeshift "lightbox," made of antique chairs and a plastic drawer.

As you can see we're working with a limited amount of space and equipment here. In the ultimate Etsy fashion, TealTown is run from home, completely hand made. Notice that there is absolutely no screen printing equipment. That blue thing on the desk was my attempt to get a 4 color station from Craig's List, which amounted to 75 bucks down the drain and 4 hours lost in downtown Cincinnati.

Closeup of the actual screen printing area. A block of wood and a tin foil pie pan holding my jars of ink (which, believe it or not, are 8 ounces each). Also some rubber gloves I swiped from work to keep the ink off my hands, which is more trouble than it's worth. I keep them for aesthetic reasons. Also an original painting I did when I was 16 or 17 for Sam. I'm not a big fan of it but she really likes it.

So, here's the setting for our later installments of 8 ounce. I'm going to get more wood today for frames so there will be some posts on the screen creation process I use. Until then, keep ahold of yourself.

Curtains look nicer outside

There are apparently some issues with links in the last post that I can't figure out. Oh well.



Check them out here.

I attended the Etsy Labs seminar on 10 Minute advertising today. The 10 minute part applies to how long it would take to advertise, not the length of the seminar which I snuck out of after about an hour. Some useful things, some not. "Blog" kept coming up, you can categorize that as useful or not yourself.

Here's the awe inspiring new product TealTown offers. This project was what inspired me to start this blog. My intention was to catalog the entire process from start to finish with photographs and descriptions, but Sam and I were so excited about it we rushed through the last week and had it done before I even sat down to type. These things look fantastic in our living room and I'm having a hard time finding a place to keep the custom screen I made to print it with, seeing as it is roughly 4 feet by 3 feet, which would be equivalent to an extremely obese square child.

Hopefully I will catalog our further endeavors the way I meant to do this one.

Upcoming Projects:
Octopus T-Shirt
Guitar Hero 3 faceplates
More curtains, different designs

In the beginning

We aren't starting from the beginning. We're actually starting from somewhere near the beginning, but before the middle. Honestly, I'm not sure where we are. But that's not important.

I've started another blog because that's what you do with blogs. You write diligently for 6 weeks tops and then you go out of town for a weekend and when you come back you realize that you aren't a writer. But that's not important either.

What's important is that I told my wife I would do this.

We recently started our own shop at TealTown. If you've never been to Etsy you should go right now. It's okay, I'll wait. Just be sure to come back.

Welcome back. It's okay, I knew you weren't going to follow the link, so I'll tell you that it's a site that hosts stores for people who make handmade items of all kinds. That way those crafty types out there can try to make enough money to buy their crafty craft materials.

We do all kinds of things. I screenprint and design T-shirts and the like, the wife is a photographer and idea (wo)man and knick-nac crafter. She's constantly coming up with new ideas. I plan on dedicating a large portion of this blog to cataloging the thought process, brainstorming and techniques we use to create our merchandise. I'd like to give our customers an inside look at the life and craft of a couple of newlywed 20 somethings trying to live off of Wii and spaghetti all the while surviving college. Not to mention shamelessly plugging our shop and items.