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: Early 2018 Outdoors Ice-dye

For the last month or so it's been pretty cold by Vegas standards. We don't get nearly as cold as some regions of the country do, as many Vegas natives like to remind their relatives via Facebook when news reports start sounding off about snow out East, but we do still have our cold months. Temperatures in the mid 30s (fahrenheit) at night are about the worst our winters typically deliver, which is evidently just cold enough to prevent our ice-dyes from fully melting. We've been doing a lot of our recent projects indoors, which has worked out pretty well for those especially frigid periods, but the weather is prone towards warming quickly here and we're already getting up into the 70s again! With weather like this it's really hard not to want to be outdoors more often, as our recent camping venture may have hinted at. On the day these items were made it was quite lovely out so I took advantage of the pleasant climate and threw together some ice-dyes. We live within walking distance to a 711 (though the hill is quite steep) so there's ice always available. We could try to make our own but we have severely limited freezer space so I doubt we could ever comfortably make enough ice for more than a shirt or two at a time. No problem, though! I have a pedometer on my phone and have been keeping track of my daily step averages for ages now so I can't gripe too loudly about an opportunity to up my step count and work on my butt. Those inclines are great for your glutes, guys, so don't be scared to tackle some hills! I'm always doing stretches and squats at work, too, because I'm a giantess who's on her feet most of the day and a lot of the product in the store I work at is kept in cabinets below my knees or high up where I need to sometimes get on my tippy-toes to reach. Use it or lose it and all that, right? I try to stay active, whether it's creating new shirts or walking around. 

We've been cranking out shirts like mad recently, and I'm beyond thrilled with this development. I find most aspects of the process soothing, and love sharing the results with everyone! I'll be sharing more of the finished shirts here soon, so check back for that. For now, enjoy this batch!

More photos below!

Art: Early Ice dye for 2018

Rainbows here, rainbows there, rainbows everywhere! We love making tie-dye and do it as often as we possibly can. It's always fascinating seeing what kind of mad science color combinations we can create! We typically work with ice-dyes, sprinkling dye over the ice so that it hydrates through and deposits pigment as the ice melts, which creates a more space-like watercolour effect. Even using only one or two colors we've been really surprised by the depth of the results! We do experiment, though, and no matter how many times we dye no two shirts (or skirts, shorts, dresses, hoodies, crop tops, etc...) are ever the same.  It's been a lot of fun throughout the journey, and we've been doing tie-dye for fun now since some time in 2015 or maybe even 2014. I can't even pinpoint the exact date, it just happened that we were driving along and Antho suggested doing tie-dye on a whim and we found that we actually, really, thoroughly, deeply, passionately enjoyed doing tie-dye. Of all the things.  It makes sense, I suppose- I've always enjoyed painting, digital and traditional illustration, and most things artsy-fartsy... there was an awkward phase around 4th grade where I found out there were these brightly coloured three-dimensional paints you could use on clothes and went about drawing all sorts of goofy lizards and things onto every clothes item I could...Colour and aesthetics have appealed to me for awhile, and Antho has always been fashion/image conscious, crafty and hands-on so tie-dye has just been kind of a natural fit for us both. We're always learning and growing as we go, though, it's just part of the process. Nothing is perfect in the beginning, and there's an adage that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to become truly skilled at any given craft, whether it's playing a guitar, tie-dye, or aeronautical navigation, so we relentlessly we strive forward in our efforts to create cloth and colour alchemy. The more we try, the more we practice, the better we get after all. This also means more shirts (or skirts, shorts, hoodies, crop tops, tank-tops, etc) we can share with everyone!  We hope to be as inclusive as possible with our size options and though our funds are limited we try to invest in items that will work for all of our fans regardless what size they wear.  We want everyone to be able to taste, or wear, the rainbow in their favourite spectrum. Everyone deserves to feel fabulous!

More photos below!

Art: Winter ice-dye round two

More ice-dye! What can I say, I love almost everything about this process and it's so much fun! We tend to have a variety of blank t-shirts floating around at any given time so all we really ever need to pick up is the ice so we're prone to spontaneous dye sessions when the mood strikes. This is ideal for us as inspiration can occur at the most random of times and I like to strike while the iron is hot- or, in this case, while the ice is still cold.  This being the desert the ice tends to change states pretty quick during the warmer months, though currently we have a little more wiggle room which is nice. In the process we've been accumulating quite a back catalogue of freshly made shirts that have yet to get properly photographed and listed on our Etsy shop, so for now they're in a bit of a limbo. This has been a little frustrating for me as I'm definitely the hardline type-A in this relationship and feel a need to stay perpetually productive. I always carry two different agendas and a plentitude of pens in various inks and viscosities to work in tangent with the complex color-coded system of tabs I use for my agendas denoting tasks accomplished or goals and events I'm looking forward to or striving towards... I make spreadsheets for fun. One of my biggest goals for 2018 is to dramatically increase our shop inventory and I've felt pressured to get cracking on it before this month slips away into the next. On top of that we've been cycling through various illnesses in various parts of our bodies (chest, stomach, sinus, blah) for most of this year so far... so, really, I suppose there's a very good reason we've been in a bit of a stagnant pause on listing items. I'm grateful that we're still being productive and at least creating, but I've got high-in-the-sky dreams for what I want to accomplish this year and I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself... perhaps 2018 is the year I should breathe deep and try to be a little gentler on myself. These things will get done, and soon, but they'll get accomplished even more gladly when I'm not stressing myself or Antho out about having not already done it. We've still been scouting locations and making new inventory, after all, so it's not like we've simply sat idly by... though, in a sense, that's a lot of what ice dye is- waiting... but I digress.  

Here's some pretty pictures of the process!