Dave Arrival.

The Dave shirts arrived in my hand and went out earlier this week. Look about.

Button set has one week left on it! And then maybe in the store? Possibly. Or I might give them away with future orders. I could send them out promotion-ally. I could sit on the box of them at my computer, or put my feet up on the box as I lean back and have further shirt musings?

I’m excited about the buttons, but I’m ready to get cooking on shirts again. The next shirt design will probably not be the batik that I had long planned, it’s taking longer than expected to finish. It may be another embroidery. It might be pure magic.

More soon, I promise.

Thanks again, everyone who has ever ordered, I well up with appreciation when I think about you, and hello new folk. Take a look around, if you will. Buttons?

I get credibility with a little help from my friends.

Last week I received a mention on fabulist, where I had found byzoek’s work previous to featuring her here. That was a height of what could be defined as delicious closure.

A really, really nice feeling.

Over the weekend I also arranged for the name of Tiny Run to be associated with a local post office box! I am now anonymous and credible? This seeming incongruous assumption baffles me, but I make it with blind confidence none the less.

Commence with the sending of tasty cookies:

Tiny Run
Director of Cookie Acquisitions
PO Box 898
Evanston IL 60204-0898

First Five Runs Button Set.

First Five 1″ button set (pictures not to scale…)
design run of
05/10/2008 through 05/24/2008

I have to admit, I’ve had a button collection thought in my head for a while. I thought it would be a nice alternative to shirts, you know, for those people who don’t like to wear clothing. Another way to showcase people’s work, and another type of run to be tiny. Depending on the final order amount, there will probably be extra sets, and they will be available in the forthcoming ‘static store’, but here and now they are at a lower price. If you’re wavering on these, I suggest you move on it now…

[edit] Whoop, it seems my paypal buttons where still charging shirt shipping on top of the included shipping. Sorry! It seems to be working properly now. If you have troubles, just let me know. – Michael

I can has bacon, oh yes.

I received all the embroidered bacon shirt supplies yesterday, including three spools of the glow-in-the-dark thread. I don’t think it will take that much, but this would be a bad time to run out. People are waiting for their bacon, man! Get a move on!

I’m dropping the supplies at the ‘full fledged production scale embroidery experts’ today, and hope to see final results in about seven business days. There will be a few extras (I couldn’t help it, when am I going to get the chance for this again?) and if you wanted to have a chance to pick one of the extra shirts up, I suggest signing up for emails. When I have a moment to construct the static surplus store, I will let faithful subscribers be the first to have at.

A Different Art Store.

I have several artist friends, and I’ve been art supply shopping with them before. We all get pretty excited when walking the isles of an art supply store. I think it sets our mind ablaze with the sheer amount of potential before us.

All the things I ever toyed with in my mind presented in front of me made my blood boil with possibilities. It’s fun both to browse or to culminate the experience by completing a monetary transaction that just feels like gravy.

For me, though, this extends beyond the art store. I know others who like me browse alleys and items dumped for possible materials. When driving around with my wife, whenever I see a pile of ‘garbage’ at a curb, I always say, “ooo, treasure.” I don’t see her reaction, but I’m pretty sure she cringes.

But there’s another place for me, too. When I go to the local American Apparel retail store, just a few blocks from my home, I look about in the same way as I do in the art store. I’m seeing raw canvas everywhere, checking colors, sizes, feeling textures and testing stretch, looking around and seeing if there is anything I missed. I don’t think it’s possible for my to just ‘shop’ for clothes anymore. I don’t think this is necessarily bad, but I sometimes wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.

One Man Shirt Army.

The ‘everything is going to be fine’ shirts are out and on their way to those who purchased. I am really pleased with how they look, I hope those few souls who braved the purchase love them just as much, if not more.

I’m in talks now with official embroiderers about the infamous bacon. Since I received a reasonable amount of orders I think I might be able to have the run produced by those with really expensive equipment, and therefor up the quality of the final shirt by many folds. The quotes I’m receiving are pretty steep, basically reducing any margin to zero. And they can’t do glow-in-the-dark threads or have never used them? Really? How am I on the cutting edge of threads?

Dave’s aut vincere are running late, seeming to be arriving in my hands next week. I will have a surplus of those due to the minimum order requirements, so I will have to resolve whether or not I want to have a static storefront somewhere here on the site. Hm.

Due to an error on my part, I may be putting in another order of Hilesh’s true star shirt. I’m perplexed if this violated my own rules. It was my error. It’s still a tiny run. Right? The extras to make the minimum of that order would go in the static storefront as well. Hm. Hm.

A storefront is something I considered when this began, as there is never a guarantee that the amount of shirts ordered will be enough for the minimum and there could be ‘extras’…but it would be per item basis. Such as there is one medium of this and two larges and one small of that, and that’s it.

Also, there is a new batik cooking to debut next Friday. It’s a design that I’ve had in my head for the past three years. The possibility of fruition is sending me to new heights. I’ll try not to fall; as usual, it’s a hang-on situation.

untitled (bye).

“untitled (bye)”
byzoek

design run of
04/26/08 through 5/9/08

byzoek’s work is full of subtlety and nuance, and was not an easy reproduction on a shirt. Since she often works on a paper with a yellow shade, but most yellow shirts are blazing bright, we decided to go with a more natural shade of cotton with the color of the paper stripped out.

This same subtlety of byzoek’s work also doesn’t translate into screen printing very well, so we decided to debut a Direct To Garment print. I was initially a little apprehensive about the probable quality of this process which I’d never seen before. I ordered a test shirt, and I say I’m fairly impressed. The process has its own limitations, but seems to provide an excellent quality of reproduction within those limitations.

Also, please go take a look at byzoek’s catalog of work on her site ‘girls are crying‘. I think you’ll fall in love. “they are weak. they are strong. they are beautiful.” Indeed.