Tonight I got all my black 1.0 shirts back from the printers, finished, and a few of the pre-orders & customs too. I'm still waiting on a shipment of blanks to arrive before I can take them to get printed. Today I also picked up the Frankie Mcfly USA maps I reordered in every colorway. I also printed some Frankie Mcflyers at home. All this is for Friday's Street Mrkt & Art Walk where I'll be vending my usual gear.

I spent the day preparing for Sunday's Rose, White & Blue event. I pulled everything from my checklist of stuff, built a display for my buttons (pictured below) and framed all 5 FRANKIE MCFLY USA print colorways. Everything took longer than anticipated and I didn't do a full set up of my booth at home to see how it'll look. Hopefully there's no issues at the event tomorrow when I set up the new displays & merch for the first time. Either way it's gonna be fun and I can't wait to be out there.

....F R A N K I E.
The red & blue USA prints give me an Alpine White kind of vibe. They remind of the Nestle candy bar wrappers from the 80s. I should do an Alpine White version of the map with a white background and blue states to make it a complete set.

I dropped off the first couple prints at the post office today! One's off to Sunnyvale and the other to Salinas. I also delivered one print myself, here in town. I needed some "Do Not Bend" stickers so I made a quick design and printed them on some Avery labels I had laying around. I really like the way they came out!

You might have seen it on your way in. If not, go check it out. (just click on the images below) I also created a contact form  for anyone interested in bulk pricing, custom color combinations and mural opportunities. 

I finally got around to taking pictures of my Frankie Mcfly USA prints. The pics are for my online store, I just haven't added them to the site yet. I also created a printable form to log every print that goes in or out. I use something very similar for my t-shirt inventory. There are currently 5 different flavors of the Frankie Mcfly USA map as seen in the animated gif below.

Today I placed an order with the printers for my first batch of Frankie Mcfly USA prints. I included a few simple colorways in the order for fun. I can't wait to finally pick up the prints and get them out to people.

Last night I ordered the supplies to package & ship 11 x 14 prints. First up is glassine paper. This goes over the face of the print so it doesn't get scratched. I went with paper, instead of plastic sleeves, to protect the artwork. It arrives in a couple days. Next are the rigid cardboard mailers for sending prints via mail. I bought prints from a friend and this is what he used. They look like they can take a beating. Unfortunately they don't arrive for at least another week. The last items are the white paper envelopes for local pickups and deliveries. They arrive tomorrow. They're flimsy compared to the brown mailers and the prints would get damaged if I mailed them in these envelopes without extra reinforcement. Which I might have to do till the mailers arrive. Next up is to order the the first run of prints and list them for sale on my online store.

I picked up the USA map proofs this afternoon. I really like the 11x14, (smallest size) but the colors on the 16x20 and 24x36 are dull by comparison. The two big ones were printed using a wide format printer and cost a lot more too. I'm going to keep looking for a better solution for the large prints but start selling the 11x14 right away. I just need to look into shipping materials and postage costs.

Today I went to Big Ink Printing in San Jose to get quotes on printing my USA map. It was my first time there and I saw one of my stickers slapped on their front desk. Patrick, my buddy who printed them for me, had them made at Big Ink. I ordered some print samples of my map in different sizes. I'll get them in the next couple days. 

I worked a little bit on my Sticker Monster piece and finished the teeth. I took pictures of the tracing & cutting process as seen in slideshow below. I'm gonna work on the tongues next.

Tonight I finally finished smoothing out every letter of every state of my US map design. The map was drawn by hand in Adobe Fresco on the iPad using the Apple Pencil. If you looked closely you'd see all the jagged lines. To fix that I spent the last few days tracing every path using the Smooth Tool in Adobe Illustrator. It not only smoothed the lines, it also removed a crap-ton of unnecessary anchor points. In the end I brought the file size down from 2.9 MB to 896 KB. 

I didn't spend much time on the map today but I did finish North Dakota, New Mexico & Colorado. All that's left is: Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon & Washington.

Almost there. Still cleaning up the design by smoothing out the paths and removing unnecessary anchor points. This sucker is 12 states away from being print ready.

Today I learned about the Smooth Tool in Adobe Illustrator CC. It smooths out jaggy lines (paths) and gets rid of a lot of unnecessary anchor points which is what I need for the drawings I make on the iPad. Using the Smooth Tool, with a mouse, on my US map would be a nightmare so I downloaded Astropad which turns my iPad & Apple Pencil into a graphics tablet & stylus to control my laptop. This sped up the process significantly and I’ve now cleaned up 22 states. I’m almost halfway done.

I went back to Casitas de Esperanza on Friday, not to work on the map mural but for their Easter event. It was open to all Amigos de Guadalupe residents They provided food for all guests and an Easter egg hunt & toy donations for the kids. Right before they released the kids to go hunt for Easter eggs the staff used my map to help line them up based on age. It made me so happy to see the map being used and to see all the kids running around having fun. I posed for a few pictures while was there too.

It never is but I’m walking away from this now. I would have liked to have washed it to get all the red chalk dust off of it, and to have spent more time cleaning up letters with the white paint as well. On Friday they’re having an Easter event, and I have a dentist appointment, so I had to wrap it up Thursday night.

Crap! I forgot to post on Wednesday. Here are pictures of the Alaska stencil before getting chalked, after getting chalked and then primed with a white base coat before getting colored.

Aside from a bit of touch ups and a good cleaning, the contiguous United States are done. I still need to lay down Alaska, and color in Hawaii to be officially done-done. In a few days Casitas de Esperanza is having their first annual Easter egg hunt, for all the kids housed via Amigos de Guadalupe, and they’re accepting donations for pre-filled Easter eggs. I bought a bag of plastic eggs and chocolate candies and loaded them up. I also drew a different smiley face on a each egg.

Another fun, busy and productive day working on the map. My friend Catrina came to help paint then my other friend, Carolina, came and she brought her goddaughter, Natalie. Alex, one of the staff members at Amigos de Guadalupe, hung out and gave us a hand too. We made so much progress and we’re a lot closer to being done.

We had 5 volunteers today to help us with our murals. We covered a lot of ground, no pun intended. I was so busy I forgot to take pictures but we did stop for a pizza break. Tomorrow I’m hoping to finish painting the top half, lay down the stencil for the bottom and Alaska and start painting some more.

I had a few volunteers help me paint today and we still didn’t get far. I thought the whole top half was going to be finished and the bottom half chalked by the end of the day. The asphalt is really difficult to paint with a brush and the mini rollers work better but some letters are too small for the roller. There was a fair amount of trial and error today. I hope I can finishing painting the top half tomorrow and be 100% done by Monday night.

Another busy day! This morning I went to Local Color to pick up and pounce the missing piece of the map that didn’t print last time. At home I cut the new pieces and taped them to the main stencils. Later, I went to Home Depot for some supplies before going to Casitas de Esperanza and priming the Hawaiian islands with white paint. I’m hoping that on Friday I can start painting the states in color after making another stencil transfer.