\W/O\B/B\L/E\B/O\X/5\ » crafts

Submitted!

blowuprobot — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:07:52 +0000

What am I doing. These are ancient.

PlushYou!: Plush You! LA

blowuprobot — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:37:53 +0000

The deadline for entering is February 22nd. I’m going to enter! I’m not going to look at what other people make. I’m not going to forget that the deadline is very soon. Maybe I should just take some photos & send them this weekend. Right? It’s highly unlikely that I’ll make a new stuffed animal in the next month…

Moonchacha is on Etsy!

blowuprobot — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:40:45 +0000

Finally!

Making a mess!

Drying

Intimidating

Weird.

Kam invited me to sell stuff with her at the Martha Stewart Employee craft sale again. Last year I had made some sweater cats and none of them sold. This year, I decided to make something simpler & more normal.

So I silkscreened some greeting cards. It was a very bipolar process (“This looks amazing!” vs. “This is so stupid, I hate everything, I would have so much more space if I just threw out all my craft supplies!”). It’s weird that I only get worked up about certain types of creative projects. Like when I make videos for LYM, I don’t go crazy about how amateur they look. But when I write an email announcement, or a blog post, I can be pretty obsessive. How about you?

Oh yeah! This is my store: moonchacha.etsy.com. Someone bought two cards yesterday, the internet is amazing! I feel like I need to make a blog on my moonchacha site now. That is excessive right?! I think the internet will slowly become more and more casual/personal, and then it will be unnecessary to have a professional and a personal blog.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this

blowuprobot — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:06:43 +0000

I should have given myself some crazy fun in-between haircuts but I was kind of scared and just wanted to get it off my neck. For about two hours I had a pageboy and then my hair dried into like a Prince Valiant helmet and I took out the scissors again. And now, finally, my hair looks like a cross between a pixie cut & Bruce Lee’s cut.

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Post tags: Bruce Lee, haircut

It wasn’t supposed to be like this

grumblebox — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:43:01 +0000

ftw! (w = wedding T_T)

I wasn’t even going to make wedding programs! And then I thought it would be funny to make a zine. Like in the olden-days! And then I made a super-plain program and Lunchbox was all, “Are you going to put something in that giant space there?”

No dude! That whitespace is filling this program design with elegance, class, and gravity!! DUH!

I wish there was a super-italic for italics inside italics.

Lunchbox was against this idea, even though it’s perfect and hilarious!

Fold at the dotted line (this is the outside of the program)

Also these vases that I ordered b/c I was like, “Whatever I don’t want to look at more fkg florists! I’d rather do it myself!”? They’re the size of freaking buckets but somehow still under 6″! So lame. Even if the centerpieces don’t look like gradeschool projects, we might not be able to get them to the venue.

Also we don’t have a first dance song.

Also my mom is making all these little changes that are not a big deal but the crazy inside me is like, “You wanna fight, Mom? Wanna fight!?! I can fight you! I’ll play the Minute Waltz for the recessional and walk down the aisle so fast you won’t even know what happened!”

I don’t know if not having a real job makes this better or worse.

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Post tags: Mom, negative space, wedding

Last Year’s Model Stickers, Batch 2

blowuprobot — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:41:33 +0000

I don’t know what happened to this set. Four or five pages of labels were partly gummed up with toner streaked over it — I didn’t notice the missing label til I got home. I hope it’s not still in the machine, gumming up other prints. The guy at Graphicolor was really nice and said, “We don’t always print labels because this happens — but you said that it worked last time [it's true! the last batch printed perfectly except for one sticker!]… I’ll only charge you half for the ones that didn’t come out quite right.” Oh well. I hope he’ll let me print more stickers there, because they look beautiful!

The artwork’s by cairobot. I did the layout/production & some vectorizing, and the silver foil labels were my idea! The foil looks a little more matte in person, but it’s still very reflective and feels much nicer than regular paper labels. The laser printer toner colors look really nice on top of it too, super shiny! (Ink jet isn’t supposed to work on this paper — I haven’t tried it though.) Thank you JAM Paper for making this possible! (But your die cuts are a little too aggro, the labels peel apart in the printer ;_;) JAM has gold foil labels too, and in different sizes. I think everyone should make stickers. (btw, is it possible to print on rolls of stickers, like these?)

Also, you know how the very tip of X-Acto blades always snap off? Is there a way to stop that from happening? It seems unsafe. Especially when you don’t always know where the tiny triangle of blade that snaps off goes.

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Post tags: labels, printing, stickers, X-Acto blades

GRAND OPENING!!!

blowuprobot — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:23:54 +0000

Come visit!

The official moonchacha/blowuprobot/wobblebox5 t-shirts+more store has just opened! So far there are only two designs up there for testing purposes, but don’t let that stop you from buying one!

I spent a long time comparing Spreadshirt & Zazzle. I decided to try Spreadshirt first since their site layout is cleaner, they were less pushy about making money, and they were upfront about tax information. Plus, they have a neat printing technique where they actually cut out vinyl in different colors (for vector-based designs). And most of the reviews online said that they preferred Spreadshirt to Zazzle prints for vector art. (But Zazzle is better for direct printing, for things with gradients and shadows.)

Starting a store in Spreadshirt was very easy, but their t-shirt designer app is a little slow. Also their FAQ is unsearchable and not very helpful. Things that took me a long time to figure out:

Can you re-name your shop after opening it? (yes)
Can you change your URL? (doesn’t look like it)
How come customers can’t place your designs onto different products in your shop? (you need a pro account)
How many vector designs can you upload in a day if pro accounts are limited to 20? (who knows?)

I’m going to try Zazzle once I have an idea for a shoe design.

Oh, I checked out reviews of CafePress too. Most people agreed that their printing quality was low, but their customer service will replace poorly printed shirts quickly.

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Post tags: CafePress, spreadshirt, t-shirts, zazzle