One of the reasons for making a zine is to sell merch. I’ll need at least one page dedicated to my t-shirts, prints & stickers. Tonight I was trying to come up with a cool layout based on the alien/space theme. It’s not quite there yet.

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!

Another slow day. I couldn't get myself to sit down and work on any one project. I pressed a single button in order to take video. I also added a couple red pieces to my Sticker Monster collage then realized I'm going to need a lot more red stickers than I have available.

I made a sale yesterday! A heather gray shirt with the pink SAN JOSE print on the front. I packaged it today. I usually do a hand drawn Thank You card but this is for a friend and repeat customer so I did something a bit different as a surprise. I can't show you what I did till she receives her order and sees it first. 

In other news I found that my bike's rear tire is rubbing against the frame when I ride. I was wondering what the strange sound was and I didn't know where it was coming from till today. I'll be taking it to Good Karma Bikes soon so they can fix it. 

I also made some new buttons. The colors still need a little tweaking on a couple but they're looking pretty cool

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.

I was going through old pictures yesterday and today and found some cool process pictures from when I made my Cells MK2 painting. I completely built it out in Adobe Illustrator before painting the panel. I also had to take a headshot today and I worked a little more on my Sticker Monster collage. It's got fangs now.

I finally using those stickers I've been hoarding for years. I'm making a sticker monster collage. So far, so good.

...with the EMN Layla-Mae & Phoenix project. I printed them out on adhesive vinyl sheets and cut them to size tonight. The blue fill on Phoenix’s stickers didn’t come out as clean as the green fill on Layla’s which I’m not happy about. It’s something to do with the vinyl sheets. All I gotta do now is find an envelope to ship them out.

The Layla-Mae & Phoenix sticker sheets are ready to print! I’m waiting on the client (my cousin) to let me know how many of each he wants. Then I’ll print them out on adhesive vinyl sheets, cut them and mail them out. While I’ve been waiting I pulled out the spare Raspberry Pi, attached to a 7” touchscreen, that I had laying around. I installed the latest OS and managed to get Disney+ to run on it, but not very well. I also tried installing Retropie, to play old school video games, but had no luck getting that to work. I’m on the lookout for something cool to with my second Pi computer but everything is either lame or above my skill level.

Mira, mira! I printed the names in 5 different sizes and cut them out to see how they look. They look great! I’ll probably skip the smallest size since it’s not much different than the next size up. Besides that, they’re about ready to print on adhesive vinyl sheets and get turned into stickers.

I keep saying that about this project. I printed both pieces after going over them with a fine tooth comb and cleaning up all the little imperfections. They look super crisp at full, half & quarter sheets. I want to see how small I can print them so I'm waiting on my printer to spit out the 6-up & 9-up sheets. It's taking forever so I'm going to bed. They should be ready when I wake up.

I'm almost done with these. I printed them out in different sizes and scribbled some notes on what needs tweaking. In the end they'll be printed on vinyl stickers.

Incase you missed the sign on the front page or my Instagram posts earlier this evening... I put my t-shirts on sale for $25 each (including shipping & handling) by using coupon code IGOT5ONIT at checkout. The offer is limited to t-shirts currently in stock and runs until December 25, 2020. This sale is in response to Black Friday, (which was today) Small Business Saturday, and all live vending opportunities being shut down due to covid. It’s a small effort to make a few sales before the end of the year and get rid of some inventory that’s been sitting in boxes all year.

I also made my FRANKIE MCFLY kiss-cut stickers 2 for $5. No coupon necessary.

I went hiking again today at Alum Rock Park and went to see if the button a I left on the log 4 days ago was still there, and it was. It sat in the rain and got a little rusty and I took it back home with me. I decided, prior to taking back the button this afternoon, that I don’t want to do sticker or button drops (for people to find) at Alum Rock Park anymore. It was a lot of fun the couple times I did it but I also felt weird about leaving stuff behind at the park. It felt like borderline littering. I also don’t want to encourage others to leave stuff, in hopes someone else will pick it up, and I don’t want people to come to the park if it isn’t to hike or experience nature. I still want to do Finders Creepers drops in the future but not at a place like Alum Rock Park, out of respect.

The sticker I left at the top of the Sycamore Switchbacks Trail at Alum Rock Park was claimed. I left it yesterday about an hour before the park closed. I thought maybe some kids had found it but it turned out to be a hiker who I crossed paths with at the bottom of the trail. He picked it up soon after I left it and he DM'd me on Instagram today and let me know. The Gram's been pretty quiet all day while we wait on the presidential election results. I uploaded my latest creation which was a picture of my head with a body made out of multiple pictures of my head. It's simple but fucking weird and it made me laugh out loud. I also got back to redrawing the letters on the Layla-Mae project, Next I'm gonna ink the background. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

I took another sticker with me on my hike at Alum Rock Park today. Last week I left a sticker at the bottom of the Eagle Rock Trail and the person who claimed it DM'd me on Instagram four days later when she found it. Today I left it at the top of Sycamore Switchbacks Trail where it meets the South Rim trail. That's about a 40 minute hike uphill from the Penitencia Creek Trail the bottom. I left it there at 4:00 PM, which is one hour before sunset, and 1.5 hours before the park closes. It's possible that it already got claimed because as I was coming down the hill I heard voices of young children above me where I had just left the sticker. It's possible that the voices came from the busier trail below and I just heard echos because I saw no one else on the trail ahead or behind me the whole way. I just hope that it doesn't get blown away and whoever finds the sticker contacts me when they do.

I took some stickers with me on my hike at Alum Rock Park today. I didn't stick them anywhere but I did leave one for someone to find at one of the information kiosk things. It's at the bottom of the Eagle Rock trail across from the Rustic Lands parking lot, inside the compartment above the letter R. If it's still there when I go back I might take it and put it somewhere else.

After drawing out some names as extra goodies for a couple kids who received t-shirts of mine as gifts I was asked to do some for my cousin. One is for his girlfriend's daughter and the other for his little brother. The difference with these is that they're going to be created digitally versus hand-drawn like the last two. I worked on Layla-Mae's all day Friday and just finished sketching it out around 5:30 AM Saturday. There's still a lot more work to do, besides digitally inking it, like tweaking the letters to make them look more like the others and coloring it all in. I've been having fun with this and can't to see it finished. When it's done I'm going to print them out on adhesive vinyl sheets to make stickers.

Here are pictures of all the stickers I've made so far. All of them except for the SJ stickers and the new pink, yellow & blue ones were printed on paper. They weren't meant to be used outside and weren't waterproof. They were inexpensive so I'd give one of each (5 total) to people who bought shirts and at events I'd give one away for free to whoever followed me on Instagram. When I ran out of the paper stickers, around the time I made my SAN JOSE shirt, I made the SJ sticker using the same design. The SJ stickers are 4"x4" and were printed on vinyl but not UV coated, which means they'll probably hold up fine indoors but would eventually fade in the sun. I still have some of these and have been giving them away with t-shirt purchases as well. I've also sold a few. The new pink, yellow & blue Frankie Mcfly kiss-cut stickers I got yesterday might be my favorite so far. The whole thing is 5.5" wide by 3.5" tall and is UV coated so it should survive the sun & the rain. I'm still figuring out pricing for the new stickers and creating bundles with the SJ stickers and t-shirts so stay tuned...

I received them tonight. I'll be adding them to the online store soon. They'll be for sale but you can also get one free with any t-shirt purchase. They are laminated vinyl and they're kiss-cut so you can just peel off my name, but if you're like me you'll also want to slap that extra piece somewhere too.

I was supposed to DJ an event tonight but I got text this morning saying it was canceled due to Coronavirus concerns. Bummer, because I really needed the cash. This time of year is already pretty slow for DJing. I did wake up to some good news though, an online t-shirt order came in. Before I got notified about the event being canceled I was planning on just bagging the shirt and sending it off. After getting word that I wasn't gonna be working I started drawing a Thank You card for the t-shirt order. I drew my head first then the tentacles & letters with pencil. Then I inked it with a couple Micron pens and fixed a few mistakes with Pro-White. When I was done I threw it in the bag with the t-shirt and a couple SJ stickers and delivered it. The customer lived 15 minutes from home so I figured I'd save him a couple days of waiting for it to arrive by mail. 

I was up late tonight getting my design ready to print. I even picked out colors from the Pantone color book. The whole sticker will be 3.5” tall and 5.5” wide but it will be kiss-cut so that my name & yellow border will peel off. I’m hoping I’ll have them in time for the Local Color Daytime Market on Sunday.

Still messing around with yesterdays design.