Art: Ice dye from early March

Perpetually working through a backlog of shirts, we still can't help but keep creating when the impulse strikes. We've actually worked our way through an entire box of shirts, over 70 (!) blank tees have now been dyed and rinsed, ready to be sorted and added to our shop in a weird sort of shirt purgatory for the time being. I'm still aiming to triple our inventory but it's proving more challenging than originally anticipated- not only is there the backend making process for the shirts themselves, but then we need to wash, photograph, wash again, process the photos then list...and in that time we're still selling away, dropping the base inventory number again and again. This, of course, isn't the worst thing- I want the shirts to sell! I'm happy to see them go to good homes! But a small part of me is a little stitious about our inventory...not superstitious, you know, just a little-stitious...  I strive to keep our shop above 200 items; it's a good round number and seems to keep our visibility up, but we quickly sell below that number at our current state...again, this is not a bad thing, just means I have to fight that much harder to try to get ahead of the curve and list more items! With the recent shop update I got us back over 200 items, but it took over 10 new shirts going live to get there again. We have at least 30 if not 40 more shirts to photograph yet before we can get them live on the shop, and by the time I've processed all those we might be back under again. It's a bit of an uphill climb, I suppose, but this is one I'm extremely passionate and enthusiastic about so the struggle isn't that bad. The more shirts we make and post, the more we're able to sell, and the better for everyone! The more we sell, the more we can invest into our business and the more shirts we can make and share with everyone. We're still working on expanding our options further through the various sizes, because we want ALL of our fans to be able to wear the colourful gear they deserve regardless of their size. This has been a time consuming process but we're happy to keep sharing it with you if you're interested! We enjoy the process along with the results~

More photos below!

Art: More January 2018 ice-dye

Another day, another tie-dye. I suppose some people might consider it tedious work by this point, but for us it's a continual process of experimentation and discovery.  There's always new folds, new colour combinations, new alchemy to uncover. No matter how many times we've dyed there's always something new cropping up, some fun new melt, something to uncover. It always seems photogenic, to me, though I guess our viewers might have their opinions about such matters. Both +Antho Jay  and I have been pretty happy with our most recent batches of creations, and as each new batch is a further step in our journey of learning and creating, I like to imagine they keep getting better as we go.  We've been experimenting with applying the dye powder directly to the fabric and then applying the ice recently, in an effort to create more precise colour patterns and lines. We haven't been unhappy with the result- and we've had a couple of items come out that we were really excited about. I'll be posting about the reveal for those when the time comes, but for now please enjoy these photos of our behind the scenes creation process for our tie-dye. We're always trying new colours and techniques and though I've posted about our tie-dye many, many times in the past I can honestly say I don't feel that it's something that will ever become redundant due to the infinite methods for creation and combination available to us.  We recently invested in a big bulk box of shirts so that we could try to create whenever the impulse struck, and I've been very very pleased with the outcome of that. We've been making tie-dye on a nearly daily basis now and trying things we might not have otherwise delved into if we didn't have such a backlog of bounty to experiment with available. While Google might say otherwise, that's their problem. We love making tie-dye and are happy to share it with the world. We hope you enjoy our colourful creations! Plenty more photos will proliferate below, so enjoy the colourful alchemy occurring below. Cheers.

Art: January Tie-dye 2018

Tie-dye, ice-dye, fabric art, textile dyes... it goes by several names depending how pretentious you want to be, but for us it's just good ole' fashioned hippie tie-dye. We've been going through so much ice that our local 711 employees have all started asking what the deal is, curious if we're having some epic party every night that they've not yet been invited to... And we go so often that our buddy Jimmy  has taken to always welcoming us with shouts of "Mister and Misses Tie-Dye!" when we enter the building. I have to admit that I kind of love it, though! I've been talking a lot about our tie-dye these days, probably because we're making some almost every night. If you follow our Instagram you'll have a pretty good idea of some of our various tie-dye shenanigans in real-time but there's also several Twitter accounts, from our official 710Visuals account to my personal account @shethatisnau and  +Antho Jay has his own, too... I try to update the blog steadily and regularly but this is a habit I'm still working on. I've got tons of stuff to share with everyone, though, and my goal for 2018 is to have a post every. single. day!! I missed a couple days in the beginning of January when I was still sick, but since then I've managed to get a post out every day. I'm working on finding my rhythm, getting the writing habit to stick, and figuring out the direction I want my blog to go in the next couple years. Yes, years. I'm at that point now where I want to plan for further and farther out into the future, and tie-dye is playing a large role in that, as is my blogging. While it's all well and good to have a day job to pay the essential bills, I really want to move away from that and get to a point where I'm less reliant on the whims of others for my financial independence. I've been pretty self-reliant over the years with my caricatures and art, but it's always good to have different projects going so that if there's ever a lull in one area you've got something else you can buffer with. If nothing else, we really enjoy making the tie-dye so it's always going to be an enjoyable hobby no matter what else we find ourselves doing.  

Art: Winter Ice-dye session

If you didn't know, Antho and I have a little shop on Etsy where we sell tie-dye. It started out as a simple spur of the moment idea, something to do for fun on a Tuesday night. Our first run was simple but terribly exciting, and we had barely a clue what we were doing but we knew that we certainly had a blast doing it! After that we started dabbling our toes in the multi-colored waters as often as we could and now nearly 4 years into our relationship we've been making tie-dye on a fairly regular basis ever since. I can't say that we know all that much more about what we're doing these days, but we definitely have fun with it and have made well over 300 items thus far! My goal is to triple that in 2018 and that means a lot of folding, lots of ice and lots of dye. I'm so very much okay with that and Antho seems to be on board, too! 

This is great because it's even better to have a partner to help with the process as rinsing out the shirts after letting them soak up the dye can be an arduous (albeit photogenic) process, as no matter how much you rinse it seems like every little movement or squeeze releases yet more dye in what can sometimes feel like a never-ending and futile quest. Eventually you do, thankfully, hit a point where you can unfurl your newest creations and get an idea of what the design will hold- the ultimate reveal is after you've rinsed them out completely and dried them, but after waiting for the dye to cure and spending so much effort in rinsing there's a lot of anticipation built up. It's always exciting to see what new images and designs are revealed along the way, and the entire process is a lot of fun. It's so relaxing to me compared to doing the caricatures and the response has been quite positive! We look forward to making many more unique dye designs in the future and I hope to share as much of that process with you as I reasonably can! It's important to us as the creators and makers behind 710Visuals that people have the chance to see the love and beauty behind the shirts as well as the end results. It's all about enjoying the ride along the way, right? 

Day trip to Berkeley

Welcome to Berkeley, a lovely little town north of San Francisco and Oakland, famous for having the oldest college campus in California along with it's politically liberal vibe.

While walking through Berkeley, it's evident that the town takes great pride in itself. The street lamps are adorned with baskets of flowers, the sidewalks are clean and the buildings beautiful and well maintained.

Quirky and creative individuals and businesses abound, with small cafes offering live orchestral performances or Japanese curry. One intersection has three distinct movie cinemas operating on different corners, each offering different movies. Amoeba records flagship store opened in 1990 in Berkeley, so if you're a music geek that's worth noting. It's a huge store with a robust selection and has expanded with newer locations in San Francisco (which we visited) and another in Hollywood.

While a fairly small town of permanent residents at around 100k, I imagine it's pretty safe to estimate that the population boons during college season. Several people remarked on the amusing contrast of seeing young preppie college kids mingling with a bunch of hippies, but that's the kind of atmosphere the town fosters. Everyone we spoke with was friendly and glowed with pride for their home.

Curious? I've got lots of photos for you below!

Vegas: Light art show @ the Velveteen Rabbit for Diego's b-day!

Our friend Diego recently celebrated another successful rotation around the sun at the swanky Velveteen Rabbit in Downtown Vegas. There was a DJ, festivities, libations, cool cats and cake!

That's right.

The cake was not a lie.

Anyway, as our visual act 710Visuals we did a live light art performance testing some excellent new equipment. The end results were a lot of fun, check it out after the cut!

2015- The Just Because Sale

Guys, I'm super excited to be sharing this with you!

A few months ago Antho & I launched our fledgling Storenvy shop for our 710Visuals project. We love all things colorful and have been experimenting with various media, including clothing and live liquid light art performances. We've been doing shows all around Vegas, including one coming up at Photo Bang Bang for First Friday!

Our Storenvy is one of the places we've chosen to share our creations, but this is the first time we've gotten involved in a site wide event like this. Between Friday the 5th and Monday the 8th we'll have 20 items up for 20% off…that's half of our store!!

Some of the shirts that will be on sale:

Hope to see you there! 

xoxo Nau