Designing our First Shirts
About a year ago, Ashley and I started talking about how we could work on projects together. She had her sign, furniture and photography to keep her busy while I had my design, website and video jobs. With all that creating going on, surely there was an easy way for us to combine our powers, spend more time together, and make things we were passionate about, right? Turns out it's not that easy. Let's just say we spent a lot of dates brainstorming instead of hopelessly staring into each other's eyes.
Finally, we settled on a t-shirt company. Why? Because we both love t-shirts. The really comfortable ones that have awesome designs on them. We also loved the idea of creating a brand that stood for something. We didn't want to make shirts with random designs on them. We wanted to make shirts that said important things. Things that would make you think. Things that would help make us better. We also wanted to use some of the money we would make to help others. To live out the things our designs would say. For our launch we're partnering with Rice Bowls - a great organization that helps feed kids all over the world. Hopefully we can show our own kids where art, business and charity collide.
But hey, let's talk about the designs, right?!
One of our goals with this whole thing was to get back to creating with our hands. Or maybe that was my goal. I use the computer too much. Anyway, we wanted to be as analog as possible with the whole process so all of the designs you see for our first shirts came from sketches in my notebook.
We focused on 3 sayings: "Give what You've Been Given," Mother the Motherless," and "Father the Fatherless." Yeah the last two are pretty foster/adoptive specific, but it's where we're at right now. And the world could certainly stand to be reminded of such a huge need. The "Give What You've Been Given" shirt comes in both men and women's styles. The women's is a black tri-blend dolman and the men's is a charcoal tri-blend fitted tee. Trust us - the tri-blend is a magical combination of threaded bliss. We bought a lot of shirts to find just the right ones.
The "Mother the Motherless" and "Father the Fatherless" shirts are the same styles, but the women's is indigo and the men's is green.
So here's the deal. We already have screens made and we're taking pre-orders for all the shirts right now. This will help us get our first run printed and begin our adventure! You can check out the store and snag a shirt here. Oh, and if you can't pre-order a shirt, spread the word about us to everyone you know. And signup for our email list so we can keep you up to date on what's going on with the store, the Last Night Ago blog and our adoption. We love you all - thanks so much for your prayers and support!
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About the Author
Jonathan Longnecker is the strongly opinionated tattooed and bearded half of Tiny Shiny Home. He loves making music, figuring out nerdy solutions, exploring the outdoors, and living off-grid.
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