I finally ordered all the blanks for the 1.0 reprints, pre-orders & customs. I'm afraid by the time they arrive and finally get printed it'll be after the First Friday Street Mrkt event on August 6th. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that I'll have them finished before then. We'll see.

In other news... I sketched this thing below. There's also a time-lapse video below that.

I'm only waiting on a couple email replies to order blanks for the 1.0 shirts. I didn't it would take this long. I didn't account for any delays, like the minimum orders or shirts to be out of stock. Now it's getting really close and I don't know if I'll get them printed and in hand before vending on First Friday on August 6th. Fingers crossed!

I spent hours today looking for alternatives to the shirts I wasn't able to buy, either because they were out of stock or had to be bought by the case. Then I emailed  those alternatives to everyone whose custom orders were affected. Now I'm waiting on their replies. Today was also my install appointment for two new tires. The old tires, one had a big crack in the sidewall, both had tread that was pretty low. While I waited on my tires I started researching my first assignment from work, using CRM (customer relationship management) software. At night I went to Meeting of the Minds, where artists get together then partner up to paint a canvas. I wasn't going to paint, just hang out, but then a local artist Chuck invited me to work on the canvas he'd been painting by himself. Busy day!

All custom & pre-order 1.0 shirt invoices have gone out so it's time to buy the shirts. While I was going through my orders and adding the blanks to my cart I noticed couple styles & colors of shirts can only be ordered by the case. So instead of being able to order three individual shirts I would need to buy 72 of each (216 total pieces). That's a no-go. Then there are a few shirts that are out of stock in certain colors & sizes. Those I'm not surprised by but they're a setback nonetheless. Tomorrow I'm going to search for alternatives, in-stock, and reach out to those who's orders are affected. 

I unpacked from my weekend trip. Washed the dishes that have been sitting in the sink all week. Bought a couple new tires for my car and scheduled an installation appointment. Read a bunch of notes and documents to get up to date on a new project at work. Hopped on a Zoom meeting to brainstorm ideas for that project then did an evening site visit to take photos and make notes. Sent out the last invoice for custom t-shirt orders. I also made a short list of things to do tomorrow so I don't forget.

Today was the last day of our weekend get-together. We had such a great time and shared so many laughs! I don't remember the last time my stomach hurt from laughing so hard! It was the perfect weekend before coming back to a busy week.

Still out of town for the weekend. Still on here posting.

I'm out of town tonight thru Sunday. Not gonna be posting much during that time so... chip, chip, cheerio!

I spent a few hours this afternoon in a meeting, getting an overview of the online tools & services I'll need to learn for my new jobby-job. It's a lot of stuff to wrap my head around and get familiar with but I'll figure it out. During the meeting, when I went back to feed the parking meter, I noticed a big crack on one of the tire's sidewalls. I was planning on driving my car to Ukiah for the weekend to together with a bunch of my cousins. For a while I thought I was going to miss it. Luckily my brother it also going so I'm hitching a ride with him tomorrow afternoon. The tire replacement will wait till next week. And in other news... I'm just about done processing all the 1.0 pre-order & custom-order requests that came in yesterday. All the the confirmation emails have gone out and most invoices too. I'll try and wrap that up over the weekend while I'm away. It feels good to be busy again and I'm excited to hang out with my cousins these next few days!

Today I called last call on Instagram for the 1.0 pre-orders and custom shirts. I received a few pre-order sales and custom-order soon after. More than had come in in all the days since I started this campaign. I was pleasantly surprised! I'm still in the process of confirming most of the custom orders via email. Once they're confirmed I'll send invoices and place the orders. So far everything is going good and still on track to have the finished shirts ready by the first week of August.

I sent out a few new mockups today for some custom tees. Some toddler & youth size crew necks and adult women's V-necks for my friend and her two daughters. It'll be so cool to see them all wearing my shirts! I think I'm going to call last-call for preorders tomorrow then place the order on Friday and hopefully have the shirts shipped early next week. In other good news, I had a meeting today regarding a mural that I'll start working on next month. I'll share more details on that after the agreements are signed and everything is in place. It's a pretty exciting project and I can't wait to tell everyone about it!

Today I created some mockups for a couple custom requests. A teal v-neck and black crop top. I had to do a little research on the shirts since they're not the usual blanks I print on. I also created new accounts with a couple different t-shirt vendors with bigger selections. I'm waiting on them process my applications before I can see resale prices and quantities in-stock. Hopefully that gets done within the next couple days so I can place my orders and have them shipped then delivered to the printers.

That means the the window for pre-orders is closing soon. Sometime this week. I'll give it a few more pushes on Instagram before ordering the blanks. Tonight I started thinking about including fun little prizes for people who pre-ordered shirts. I got a few ideas that I'll be working on over the next few days.

Although I've already been offered this new job and I accepted it, I still haven't told many people about it. I'm just waiting on a few more things to happen before I completely spill the beans. Regardless, I'm already doing work researching for an upcoming project I'm in charge of. Tonight I came across a few hurdles. One of them will have a huge impact and may change everything that's already been planned for this project. I've thought of a few workarounds but it needs to be discussed with the rest of the team before moving forward. This reminded me of putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We have to put the right pieces in place and build upon them in order to complete the bigger picture.

I had my first work meeting this afternoon to go over some basic stuff to get me onboard plus details on the projects I'll be spearheading over the next 5 months. I'm really excited about this and can't wait to really sink my teeth into it. I also packaged and delivered a t-shirt order that came in yesterday from a buddy of mine. I drew him a cool little thank you card which I'll post later.

It was a good day from the very start! I was able to drive a friend who I haven't seen in years to her doctor's appointment in the morning. I shared my LEGO 1.0 Shirt pics to Instagram and I think people got a kick out of them. I sold one shirt that was in stock and got a pre-order for a custom tee, a purple V-Neck. And to top it all off I got a new job! A 5-month contract gig that can turn into a full time position, with a local organization I truly love. More on that later...

I had a bit of fun today building t-shirts out of Legos. I used almost every brick I had of each color to make each t-shirt. Afterwards I opened the pictures in Adobe Illustrator to add my logo. Tomorrow I'm gonna post them on Instagram to push my 1.0 t-shirt pre-sales.

I spent hours today uploading my mockups to my online store, writing the copy, and creating a form for people looking for a different styles and colors of shirts than the ones I currently use. I also talked to my screen printer buddy about my pre-order strategy, costs, and timeline for when I'll deliver the blanks and receive the printed shirts. So far, so good!

Today I photographed 6 different colored t-shirts then made mockups of my 1.0 (logo) tee in Photoshop. I digitally erased the neck tags in the photos too. The plan is to offer the color tees as presales, and not carry a full stock of them. Maybe just one color. I've reached out to my screen printers and I'm waiting on a quote before offering pricing and making the presale orders live on my online store.

I didn't do any work today or anything artsy fartsy. I went to party and hung out with friends I haven't seen since before Covid. It was the type of party I used to get invited to but couldn't attend because I used to DJ every weekend. It was so much fun catching up and joking around. Tomorrow I'll get back to work on reprinting t-shirts.

I'm reprinting my black 1.0 tees with white logos and I want to make new colors available. I don't want to carry a full inventory of every size in every color so I'm thinking of offering them as custom orders and maybe keeping one color fully stocked, besides black. 

Nothing artsy of fartsy today but I did get a new tent! I bought a sleeping bag yesterday and now I'm ready to go camping. It's been 10 to 15 years since the last time I camped. I'm thinking of going up to Joseph D Grant County Park, where I went hiking, and staying a night and maybe going hiking in the dark!

Ran more errands today, got invited to work a secret collaborative art project, watched the movie Black Widow in the theater and sketched these two late at night.

Not much to report on today. Just a few things. I counted my t-shirt inventory yesterday and updated the online store today. (I still need to count my USA map prints tho.) I bought some supplies on Amazon: A dispenser & cutter for a 24" roll of glassine paper (used to wrap prints before shipping,) boxes for shipping prints and t-shirts together, an archival box for storing my prints, and a couple sound-active party lights for my vendor booth when I do nighttime events (I can also use them when I DJ.) I also started looking at blank t-shirt prices for my Shirt 1.0 reprints as it's time to get that ball rolling.

Today on Instagram I uploaded pictures and video of the button display I built for my vendor booth. It was a last minute build. I made it the night before the Rose, White & Blue Parade event and I'm pretty happy how it came out. I bought a used frame from the Goodwill, yellow felt from Joann fabrics, hinge & back board from Home Depot, and I already had the scrap lumber & velcro at home. I'm going to leave it as-is for now, until it breaks or I come up with a better design, or solution, to display my buttons at events.