So I have been wanting to start a little hobby biz selling hand printed limited edition shirts online for several months now. One of the biggest things holding me back was picking a name. I can’t legally or safely use “JetGirlArt” because of the comic reference and blah blah blah, plus it’s the name of my blog which I don’t make any money on whatsoever. The first idea I came up with was “White Rabbit Apparel” which would have been great to have a little white bunny logo to discharge out of the shirts and since I’m printing on organic tees and stuff the environmentally friendly aspect would work with the rabbit and all. Too bad some yankees already have a custom apparel and art store set up as “White Rabbit Gallery” and thats too similar to me. Don’t wanna look like I’m ripping off another indie company. After talking with Cody who suggested to go fully organic and enviro-friendly because it was more “Austin” like and would sell better since its a niche market anyway. So we just went with Austin Apparel.

Now I had one big reservation using Austin Apparel because of one thing…. American Apparel. At first it looks like a total massive name ripoff. However if you look at it they are two different things. American Apparel produces the actual apparel, I am just printing on it (ironically enough on American Apparel’s organic line lol) Can’t really get in trouble for using the name of the town in a biz name when you base it in the town. We do have plans to move back into actual Austin within the next year, plus the entire thing is online/mobile to begin with. I did check that there wasn’t any printshops or clothing lines already named Austin Apparel. GoDaddy did have the .com parked at 1500 dollars so we went with the .net because we’re not fascist capitalists. (well, I’m not anyway)

After getting the domain registered, I quickly ran to twitter and facebook to save the accounts there as well. I’ll have the .net placeholder site up soon with updates on the whole ordeal via this blog. Austin Apparel will be set up as a store-only, this will still be my main blog and any updates, sales, or events will be placed here. So yeah, this morning I got up early to work on a few projects when I decided to go ahead and whip up a logo. 10 minutes later you have what you see up at the top of this post. Knowing full well I love Helvetica and use it on like, 90% of my logos I just didn’t want to push it any more with American Apparel so I bit the bullet and bypassed it on my font list, instead opting for a more professional looking script font which seems to be making a comeback lately.

I plan to do a soft launch of the online store in May, and if its meant to be I’ll have a booth set up at Mineola’s Mayday festival, but that means I have a bit of stuff to save up for before then. I think I can do it though.

One thing I want to be clear is I am not setting up a custom shop. I am not set up nor intend to compete with local printshops who are far better equipped and set up for handling your 50pc family reunion t-shirt order. I will be doing averages of 50pcs per style in appropriate sizes, when those shirts sell out they will not be reprinted in that same manner. I will be both designing and printing the shirts myself. I may use the same logo but in different colors later or on a different color shirt, etc. but no shirt will be reprinted in the same way again. I will only be printing on organic cotton tees, bandanas, bags, etc. with plans to begin using American Apparel’s line of organic tees to begin with but will sample others as time goes on, starting with them because of their reputation and known quality. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have more than just t-shirts.  I do want to be as environmentally friendly as possible, which is easy with waterbased inks yet a problem with discharge inks. While discharge is waterbased the bleaching agent used to “discharge” the cloth is not exactly the safest thing in the world (once it’s washed it’s totally safe as the agent washes away). So I cant make any “green” promises but its at least better than plastisol. So while the actual garment may be organic, the ink is what it is. Even my bud at OMUNKY has the same enviro-friendly standards, he even uses some tees made of recycled materials which is even cooler but not the rout I want to go.

Ok so I procrastinated on the update of the blog all weekend due to this party and Fable2 getting in my way ^_^.  That and Cody just found out that our host allows PHP so he is now moving the AustinTuners forum from the ASP.NET fail forum to a new shiny install of PHPbb which is located HERE if you would like to re-join or join up for the first time. (also note that soon this blog will be located at jetgirlart.com and not jetgirl.wordpress.com but that wont be for another week or so ^_^)

Alright on with party. So Cody and Patrick showed up at 5:30pm because they can’t read giant magenta text on the flyer that said everyone was showing up at 7:30pm. So they chilled out until folks showed up. I of course was still in San Marcos at 7:30 because I was making icing and attempting to apply it to the cake I made the night before. About halfway through the  mixing process my mixer began to make that all too famous “im’ overloaded and about to die” smell and just before I could shut it off it did so on its own, I haven’t been able to turn it back on since.  Luckily I have my backup hand-mixer and that fixed the mixing issues.  My only real problem was the humidity in the air caused the icing to become aqueous and simply would not firm up even in the fridge. So at about 7:45 I gave up, piped white icing across the top and orange around the sides to semi-depict a FRAM air filter and loaded it in the floor of the Subie.

I ended up at the shop about 9:00 and everyone was already there and eating so they were ready for cake by the time I got there. Everyone said it was good and a good 75% was eaten of it. ^_^

Overall everyone seemed to have fun and we attempted to clean up as much mess as we could before Cody and I left for San Marcos around 2am. It was fun getting to see people I only have talked to online through the forum and seen but never met.  Ian, Tyler and a few others are renting that shop out so they have space to work on all the cars you see there in the pics, half of which are Ian and Ashley’s. As of right now only one works but I think they got a new turbo for the RB so it should be up and running soon.

Coming tomorrow: the epic Fable2 post.

Yay for job where I can photoshop between projects!

Cody and his group of car fans (the rest of the dudes in the house) are having their first meetup for their group AustinTuners.
Thier meeting up at Chipolte at LaFrontera in Round Rock. If you want to go simply sign up on the forums and let Cody know. If you dont have a riced out honda or unpimped auto you can still come by and check out all the fun cars and eat burritos with us. I myself will be sporting a 2002 Chrysler Voyager lol. Maybe well ghost ride it hahaha. No, seriously there will be cool cars like a real live rx7, 240sx and a handful of swapped Honda Accords. Come by and eat food and play cars!