happy birthday, leonard nimoy!

not trying to be funny.

a lot of the time at craft fairs people will come up to me & tell me how funny my stuff is. i guess it is a nice compliment but it always strikes me as a bit strange because i am never really trying to be funny. maybe it slips out by accident but i'm not so sure that is the case. i guess it's how you look at things & what you've been through.

i remember once someone looked at one of my prints & it made her cry (in a good way i'd like to think) & then a few minutes later a small group of people came by & looked at the exact same print & they all had a jovial laugh.

here's a preview of a new postcard i am just finishing up... it'll be on sale by the end of the week. maybe it's the funniest thing you'll ever see!

UPDATE 03.17: postcards are now in shop. 5 bucks for two + s&h.

hand mailed!

i received this letter yesterday in the mail & i thought it'd be interesting to share it. it is a solicitation from a local mortgage company. the first thing you'd probably notice about it is that it is written in chinese. i get tons of mail like this all the time from companies who have a chinese rep who will send me solicitations in chinese. i also get phone calls all the time, mostly from phone or cable companies who immediately begin speaking to me in mandarin. it is interesting to me how they determine that i might be fluent in chinese! it makes me wonder how companies group people together based on their last names... how many people will get letters from this company in spanish or hebrew or french or german or korean or japanese or another language? it kind of boggles the mind. this kind of solicitation probably works great if you have just moved to this country & can barely speak a lick of english! too bad i am not in that demographic.

anyway, i can speak mandarin but my reading & writing are pretty bad. i am pretty sure the letter is wishing me a happy (chinese) new year & telling me about their awesome financing plans that are great for (chinese) people.

what really impressed me about this letter though & the main reason i chose to share it is that the signature is HAND WRITTEN! holy cow! how often do you see that in a cold solicitation? i always closely inspect the signature & at best it is usually a printed signature in color. it is rarely, if ever, done by hand. i wonder if this person is hanging by the telephone wondering if i'm going to call. a hand signed solicitation really makes that much of a difference to me as a consumer. it shows that time went into what you are getting. if i needed a mortgage & was on the fence about this company & another i'd probably go with this one based solely on that. i'm sold!

i am a firm believer in the personal touch... i will personalize pretty much every order i get in my online shop. i'm not trying to get people to take loans out or sell them houses, i just think it is important to let someone know that you really appreciate their business & you really love what you are doing which i do. i usually try to spruce up mail i am sending to friends too. i am always proud of the packages i mail out just like, as silly as it sounds, i bet this loan officer must be proud that he signed his letters by hand. you can always see me beaming in line at the post office with my pile of decorated packages. if you order something from me i want it to be a pleasant experience... a nice decorated package to be waiting for you at home after a long day at work & what you ordered along with a nice note inside instead of a plain package with an invoice inside. there's a time & a place for that & it's certainly not from buying stuff from me. i try to throw something extra in, usually a button, but sometimes i'm in a bind & getting your package in transit sooner trumps getting a little trinket with your package which might arrive a little later.

this is getting harder & harder every year as i get more & more orders. i am planning on begining to screen print standard designs on my envelopes & print stickers for my mailing tubes instead of decorating them one by one by hand. i know this isn't the same as doing everything by hand but i hope it doesn't take too much away! they'll be hand printed! however, i don't think i'll ever stop writing handwritten notes... i guess this is the first step in going corporate, huh?

they're back!

they're back! people kept asking for them so i printed out another batch. so... you'd better buy them! 8 bucks for a set + shipping & handling. i have a 2nd series coming out soon. these koalas are all part of the steam city koala lucha libre association down in koalatown. someday it'll all make sense...

product review: sanford magic rub erasers.

have you ever gone to the store to routinely buy something & that something was not there? maybe you figure that the store is just out of stock so you decide you can just come back another time. but the next time you go back it's still not there... & you start to get suspicious. you go home & see what's going on on the internet (because you don't have an internet phone & never want one) ... and it turns out they have discontinued your product! this happens to me all the time! it is the worst feeling ever. it happened with polaroid film, postum, print gocco, and dilberitos, the dilbert brand vegan burrito. (to be honest, i don't miss the dilberito that much, i just wanted to mention something that didn't begin with a 'p.')


so imagine my fear when going out to a routine stationary run a few weeks ago i couldn't find yet another thing anywhere: magic rub latex erasers. i went home & it seems that magic rubs are not in danger, but i'm still pretty nervous. i have been using magic rubs for many years (since the june of 2003. i bought my first magic rub at a stationary store in berkeley, ca in june.) & they have become my primary 'big eraser.' i can't imagine life without them! (my middle eraser is a pentel clic eraser and my fine eraser is the papermate tuff stuff eraser stick which replaced the pentel z2-1 refill erasers around 2004 when they changed the formula and started being made in china.)

first off, let me mention that 90% of my drawing process is erasing. i am a bit of a perfectionist & if something isn't perfect, i erase it. this tends to leave paper quite ragged after repeatedly erasing it for a few days. prior to trying out magic rubs i used the pentel hi-polymer erasers, those erasers with a paper sleeve & that cool 80's graph paper design. i have basically been using these since childhood. they are an excellent eraser for doing clean erasing, my one problem with it is the effort you have to exude to do a good job erasing. if you don't hold your paper down well enough you end up with a big crumply mess. this is bad news if you've been working on something for a long time. i resisted the magic rubs for many years because i didn't think they could hold a candle to the rad look of the pentel hi-polymers. they were so plain and drab looking! however, i have since learned my lesson. the magic rub does just as good of a cleaning job if not better but with much less friction. i can recklessly erase anything and the soft latex will gently react. the erasers don't last as long as the hi polymers but it still takes me a really long time to go through a single eraser, especially if i have one at home & one at my studio. and they're made in the good old usa.

while things being discontinued can be a bummer, the worst is when they change things up on you & don't really bother to tell you! this happened with my small eraser, the pentel refills. one day i was drawing & routinely replaced an eraser & it didn't do a good job at all! i tried another one... same thing! it was horrible. it took me about a year to find the papermate tuff stuff eraser stick. i hope they never discontinue that or skimp on the quality! it's always sad when the quality of something unexpectedly goes down. it's happened to me with annie's mac & cheese (smaller net weight), national brand engineer pads (no cardboard back, poor grid alignment) & who knows what else. i would gladly pay a little more to get something of a better quality & it makes me sad when companies think they can get away with it. you will never buy something from my shop that'll make you feel like that! unless i end up selling it to like hallmark or american greetings. hey, a guy's gotta eat!