Last weekend I took Isaac to Mineola to go see the rodeo. Unfortunately it was just too rainy and wet outside to take him to see it Saturday night. However, it was bright and sunny the next day which allowed us to take him to the zoo to see some animals instead!

The Caldwell Zoo is in Tyler, Tx and is the zoo we always went to as kids from kindergarten all the way to about the fifth grade. When I was a kid the zoo had always been free, however a few years ago they began charging to get in, as well as remodeling a few areas and getting some new animals such as white tigers and penguins.

The indoor snake exhibit had gone unchanged since the last time I had been to the zoo some nearly 10 years ago.

In fact, this may be the same lion I saw here when I was a kid lol.

Their African plains exhibit is unique in that they group the animals to appear in their natural habitat with the zebras and gazelles just an invisible ditch away from the lions, making them appear to all be in one area.

The giraffes and elephants were still in the same place as they always were.

The new baby rhino was there too.

Always fun to take pics of the Toucans.

Their parrots are in open air exhibits as their wings have all been clipped.

My favorite animal to see when growing up was the flamingo. It was the first animal you came across after walking past the entrance and sure enough they were still there.

Isaac had a good time at the zoo, his curly straw cup he got in the gift shop is now his favorite cup ever.

Isaac had his third birthday this weekend and all of his cousins and aunts and uncle and friends came!

Now, Isaac’s actual birthday was last weekend but we had to move the party to yesterday to make sure his papa could make it.  When I asked him if he wanted a Thomas the tank engine cake or Buzz Lightyear cake he promptly responded BUZZ!!!!! So thus the party suddenly had a Toy Story theme! I decorated the cake the night before and started icing the cupcakes. I really wanted to geek out and make an actual Buzz out of cake but I had some issues with the T-shirts I made for the party so cake making was delayed so a simple Andy’s Bed version was made:

Isaac had a great time at the party, lots of family and a few friends of ours came out to visit and have some lil burgers and hotdogs and chicken wings. Isaac’s favorite part of course was the cupcakes with sourworms in them. He LOVES sour candy. I was concerned earlier in the day because it was storming all night and still muggy and rainy out that morning. However by noon it had cleared up and warmed up to the point it was perfect outside!

He got all kinds of presents for his birthday including some sets of blocks, water toys, and an actual Buzz Lightyear toy. Cody and I got him this Toy Story bike with some of his birthday money! He is getting the hang of pedaling and should be able to ride it great by this summer. Just means I’ll have to fix up my bike so we can ride around.

So I ordered the shirts Monday from BlankApparel and they came in Tuesday. O_O I ran to Herwecks after work yesterday to pick up a quart of emulsion and an extra screen and headed home.

Today I brought the screens to work to expose them because I don’t have my own exposure unit yet. Well I mixed the emulsion before 8am, coated the screens at noon during lunch, and checked on them around 2. They LOOKED dry but I must have gotten this new stuff too thick because it wasn’t completely dry enough because as soon as I got it out of the exposure unit and hosed the screen off the emulsion began to pull away from the screen. So I’m letting the other two screens dry overnight and hopefully they will work as I only need two screens to do the shirts. I have one set of art for the adult (parents) sizes and one size for the kids shirts. To make the art fit the screens I had to omit my Austin Apparel sponsor on the back of the shirt, but it should look better in the end.

In other Isaac birthday news its totally going to rain on Saturday which is making pretty angry as we went to all this trouble to get the back yard in shape for a party. If it rains we’ll all just sit inside and do whatever, any kids that show can just attack the pinata in the living room like a zombie horde.

Been throwing ideas around for shirts to print this summer. After looking around and doing a little bit of research I have come to the conclusion that to start I should get a one color press, a half dozen screens, a few pints of ink, and a wholesale account at American Apparel and I’ve got it made.

Why 1 color prints?

• Forces me to be creative with the design
• Easiest to align and register
• Uses only one screen

Why discharge ink? (waterbased)

• Environmentally Safe
• No hand (super soft feel)
• Easy to cure (when its white its done)

Why American Apparel?

• Sweatshop free
• Made in America
• Ring-Spun 100% cotton.

Doing the shirts this way I can sell all the shirts for a set price and I won’t lose money having to sell a four color job for the price of a one color job just because people are timid to spend over 18 dollars for a t-shirt. Considering they can just go to the mall and get a t-shirt for 19.99 themselves, why would they want to buy a shirt online for 20 that they also have to pay to ship? This is where educating the customer comes into play. 99% of people who buy a t-shirt get it because it says something cute, quirky, or has a branded logo on it. Folks will pay 35 dollars for a 1 color JohnnyCupcakes t-shirt only for the fact that it is limited edition and may not be available if they wait for it to go on sale at 25$. Seems crazy right? Well it works for him, and he has been doing awesome for the past ten years.

Don’t worry, I won’t and honestly can’t charge people 35 dollars for a t-shirt. However they will be limited edition runs in selected colors and sizes. It is probably easier to sell someone a blank t-shirt than one with a printed design on it. If customers do not like the design they simply won’t buy the shirt, no matter what you charge, it’s that simple. Eventually I would like to graduate to multiple colors at which time I would adjust the price of the shirt accordingly. Rather than a straight price all across the board the profit margin would be the same for one color shirts as well as 4 color. That way I don’t have to worry about not selling enough of the high-profit shirts in order to justify the ones I don’t make enough on.

So, what should I print on these shirts? Do I cater to folks my age? Other artists? Nerds? Car Enthusiasts? The answer is all of the above. There are so many companies out there selling shirts for gamers, nerds, etc that the market is simply over-saturated. With the advent of sites like Zazzle, CafePress, etc anyone can get what they want on a shirt for around twenty bucks. So what does that leave me? Well thats simple, I would have to sell designs/concepts/artwork that they could not just mock up themselves and print somewhere else. I’m not going to look at current trends and go “ok I need one skull design, one flower design…” because thats just the same generic design you can get anywhere else for cheaper and in more colors. I have to make the shirts witty and artsy at the same time. They may or may not be funny, or have text, etc. They just have to be good designs!

My angle is the same as all the other indie shirt printers. I would be selling manually printed high end designs on premium garments using water based inks. Doing so I would be offering customers not only a semi-unique garment but a piece of art as well.

What I won’t be doing: Do not ask me to print your shirts for you. I am not setting up a screen print shop, there are plenty of totally competent mom and pop shops in your local area that can print as many colors on as any shirts as cheap as you want them to on some totally rad Garbage 8000′s. I am not a custom shop, I just work for one. I may from time to time do shirts for a friend or relatives but thats as far as I go.

This week I have been messing around with some t-shirt templates I found on the interwebs. This one is set up in photoshop so its great for getting shirt colors the way you want as well as mocking up a design. Too bad 99% of my designs are done in illustrator hahaha, no biggie tho. The first shirt I played around with is this layout for a “Captain Slow” shirt. Yes I was watching TopGear when I did it. Don’t worry BBC, I wont be printing this one as the pic of May is way too low rez to print as big as I want hahaha! Still fun to mess around, and this is just about exactly what a large one color discharge print will look like.

This second shirt I mocked up yesterday I will be printing as party favors for my sons 3rd birthday party in May this year. The only issue right now with this design is that you can’t discharge royal blue, so I am on a quest to find a blue that will discharge

I would really like to find out how and where to get the custom sewn in tags you see on the bottom left of the shirts there. Several shirt companies have them and it’s just one of those fine touches that makes a limited edition garment worth the extra money you pay for.

So Saturday Isaac and I got up and headed to Austin to pick up Cody from the airport. He had spent the week out of state for work last week. He was tired from his trip so we went on back to San Marcos for him to shower and take a nap before we went back into Austin for the AustinTuners noodle meetup.

Before we got to the noodle meet up we stopped by Tek Republik and dropped off the xbox 360 for cleaning and repairs. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get fixed up so I can get to playin forza3! The noodle meet had a small turn out but I didn’t expect a crowd in the slightest. Not everyone likes pho and lots of folks have been busy with school lately.

We brought Isaac with us, Jack and Ellen came too, so did Ian and Ashley. After about an hour we were all ready to leave and we had Xrunnit show up so Cody stayed a bit longer to chat cars with him while Jack, Ellen, Isaac and I went to Amy’s Ice Cream for dessert. Obviously I didn’t have any, but we got some for Isaac but he was super tired by then and only ate a few bites, Cody had to finish it for him.

Today we all slept in a bit. Cody went over to Chuck’s house to watch the Cowboys lose. Isaac and I stayed here while Isaac took a nap and I worked on the next meetup for the AustinTuners thing. Later in the afternoon I was planning on headed out to Walmart to get diapers and such when I couldn’t find my keys. I had left them in the passengers side door of cody’s car. /fail. He brought home groceries and stuff and said to clean up the living room cuz Bryan and Traci were headed over.

I made some spaghetti for dinner, used macaroni noodles instead of thin spaghetti noodles, sooo good. Watched last nights recorded episode of SNL with Sigourney Weaver…AWESOME. Then Bryan and Traci came over with late Christmas presents for Isaac and us. They got him a toy guitar, nerf sword and a nerf basketball goal! They got Cody a copy of Uncharted 2 for the ps3. He has been playing it all night, it’s pretty fun looking. But the coolest part is what they got ME:

Nintendo Controller Soap from Dirty Ass Soaps. Super awesome as its the exact size of the real controller to the point its probably molded straight from it.

It smells good too! The second thing that they got me, which I wasn’t expecting at all, as a copy of Between Me and Life, the Romaine Brooks biography. I had been looking for something on her since I did research on her time period back in an Art History class at UMHB. Super hard to find these books because they only printed them once in the 70′s and it’s the only biography of hers that the lady who wrote it actually interviewed Brooks in person. She died in the late 70′s so this was cutting it close!

The book is pretty cool as it has actual pics of photos of her I haven’t seen before like this one of her actually WITH d’Annunzio: (yes THAT d’Annunzio)

What was even cooler was the full color photos of some of her paintings in the middle:

Totally awesome, I really need to sit and read it, I’ll probably bring it to work and read during breaks