Some Interesting News

Ashley left this message for me the other day in the comments section of one of my posts:

Hi,

I am a fellow Fort Worthian and met you once at an Etsy Dallas show. I am writing to tell you about a friend of mine who is on a bike tour of the U.S. and will be passing through Fort Worth soon. Their blog, if you are interested, is http://pathlesspedaled.com. I am not a bike person, but know Laura through jewelry making and am planning to host them while they are here. They occasionally put on presentations of their trip and I have asked her if that is something they would want to do in Fort Worth. Anyways, I thought you might be interested in their blog at least.
I hope you enjoy it!
Ashley Akers

After a few emails back and forth with Ashley, I received an email from Laura. She and Russ, you may know him as Russ Rocca The Epicurian Cyclist, are now in west Texas. Laura says that they expect to be in Austin in a couple of weeks. They will be staying in Austin for about two weeks before pushing north to Fort Worth. I'm guessing that they'll arrive in our area at the end of March or early April. Laura says that they would like to get together with some of the local bike community. I was excited to hear that they are also wanting to do a presentation. I'm going to help them out by finding an interesting venue. I was thinking that it might be cool to have the presentation coincide with another BABBLE group ride. I'm open to suggestions.

You can keep track of their progress on The Path Less Pedaled.

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Since all this is coming about due to Etsy, I figured I would promote a few of the related Etsy shops.

Tangerine Treehouse is Laura's Etsy shop. She is creating her items while she's out riding across the country.

Ashley Akers Jewelry is of course Ashley's Etsy shop. She creates her jewelry using sterling silver and gemstones. She is one of the few people on Etsy that offers free worldwide shipping.

I need to put a good word in for my friend Chandra (Green Commotion) and his wife Teresa. They sell hand crafted soaps which can be purchased from their Etsy shop or their blog. I recently purchased a bar of Rose Quartz for my daughter, and a bar of Emerald Gem Stone soap with patchouli and rosemary for myself. These soaps not only smell fantastic, they are little works of art. I will be trying a bar of their Coffee Haus next.

Jingle Bash-An Enjoyable Evening

Jingle Bash is over, so that means that my life can return to normal. No more late night printing sessions trying to get ready for the show. The Etsy Dallas leadership did an amazing job organizing this event and drawing crowds of shoppers.

This is our section of the building before the start of the show.


My lovely wife manning our booth. It's almost impossible to get a photo of her when she isn't blinking.


I screen printed these business cards at the last minute the night before the show. We got lots of compliments on them.



We finally had the chance to meet some other Etsy Dallas members. They are a great bunch of people but one of the couples really stood out, Emily and Omar of Backbone, they are super nice people and are a joy to talk to. They are photographers although Omar has a day job working at the Spiral Diner in Dallas. They live in Oak Cliff and Omar uses his bike as his primary means of transportation. Emily says that their place is small but packed full of bikes. We traded some of Emily's photos for a couple of our t shirts.

Emily and Omar


I was also surprised when Mister Pondero himself, Christopher Johnson and his wife showed up at our booth. I wish that we had more time to talk bikes and stuff but business started picking up at about that time. I'm glad you made it out to the show Christopher.

One thing we were asked over and over again was if we printed children's shirts. I haven't yet but I am going to start real soon. We sold lots of shirts but I believe we could have doubled our sales if we printed kids shirts also.

This was our first show and it was a great experience, we had much more business than I had expected plus we made money for our children's Christmas. We'll definitely be doing more shows. Now I need to get back on my bike.

I wanted to show off some of Emily's work. These photos are from her Etsy shop. You can see more of her work here. Support your fellow cyclists and buy a photo if you can.

Our New Shop

After dealing exclusively with people from Etsy for the past year or so, I came to the shocking realization that it's an inconvenience for non-Etsy people to have to create an account to purchase our shirts. To remedy this we've just opened a new shop on Big Cartel. Now, all our customers have to do is add the item they want to their basket and checkout. You can pay with Paypal or your major credit card. It's pretty quick and easy. That being said I would encourage you to take the time to sign up on Etsy. I'm sure you'll be surprised at some of the interesting stuff you'll find there. You'll also meet some really cool people.

Here are a couple of shirts we just put up for sale in our new shop. Click on the red square (to the right) to see our shop.

Light Blue Derailleur Shirt


Crankset T Shirt in Irish green

Returning Designs

I used to sell these shirts on Ebay a couple of years back. This designs, a Campagnolo track gruppo and a Campy dérailleur were very popular. I don't remember why I stopped selling them. I pulled out the screens this morning and cleaned them up. Once I decide what color shirt to print them on I'll put them up on Etsy.

Choosing shirt colors is always a problem for me. If you like the design and have a color preference post a comment. Help me out.







This is a design featuring an old De Rosa Primato. I might print this one again also.

Sunday Printing

The high temperature is supposed to hit 107 degrees today, so to prevent heat stroke I decided to get out to the garage and get my printing done early. I had a few Etsy orders to finish so that they can be packed shipped out tomorrow morning.

Etsy Friends

This past week was great. We were featured in a blog and in an Etsy treasury. We are honored and would like to return the favors.

Cut Out an Collect
One of our shirts was featured in an Etsy treasury by Cheyne, a fellow Etsy Dallas Street Team member who lives just down the road in Arlington, Texas. She has a business called Cut Out and Collect. She's got a really nice website with links to her Etsy shop.



Cheyne makes some pretty nice bags, like the messenger bag pictured above as well as wallets and buttons.

On Dogwood Lane
Our tribute to the great Bernard Hinault, the Badger T Shirt, was featured on On Dogwood Lane. The blog's author, Sally, does quite a bit of sewing and has recently began selling seatbags and other bike related items in her Etsy shop.



The picture above is of a cool little top tube bag mounted on Sally's Specialized.

Please take some time to visit these shops and mention that you heard about them here.

This Weekend's Project

I've finally gotten around to printing this design in white ink on a dark shirt. The design was meticulously hand drawn from an old catalog by Texas artist Jackie Barefield. Check out her Myspace page. She's listed in my top friends

Printing Tags

After the everything settled down after our front page appearance on Etsy, we had the opportunity to answer some of the emails about our shirts. We were contacted by a lady who is opening a clothing store in a college town up north. She wants to sell our shirts. I realized that we really don't have an official logo, labels, or tags to attach to our shirts. I prepared some large screens and some sheets of tag board I've had around for quite some time. I hadn't used these screens before so I hadn't thought about them being too large for the press I use to print paper and vinyl. My wife has been wanting a new coffee table, so I took the top off of our current table, screwed some clamps on it and now I've got a new, much larger surface to print on.

In this photo I've already printed the red background and I'm registering the 2nd color.


Here's a look at the final print prior to cutting. The registration looks to be a little off.

This is what happens when you're not paying attention and you load the paper upside down.

The finished product.


I think the mistakes look pretty cool.

The Front Page

Monday evening during a break in the hockey game I checked my email and was bombarded with messages and purchases from my Etsy shop. This is highly unusual. I went to Etsy.com to log in and was amazed to see one of my shirts on the front page. Its the orange one in the photo below.

The number of views on this shirt went from about sixty to over seven hundred in under an hour. At 9:00 PM, it was gone, well at least from the front page. It's in the Storque Spotlight under the title "Dudes need shirts". We're really happy with the positive comments we've received from some really cool people. I'm also hoping that Justin, the artist who created the design received an increase in traffic as well. Here's a link to his shop, Triplemilled.etsy.com.

2nd Design

This is the second design from Justin at Triplemilled. Its a three color print on a light navy Alternative Apparel t shirt. I printed this one and only one after work last night. The set up, registering of the screens, and mixing the inks took forever. I'll be printing the women's version soon.

New Men's Shirt

This is the men's version of the design by Justin at Triplemilled.com. Ultra blue print on a tangerine Alternative Apparel t shirt. I should have these shirts listed for sale in my Etsy shop this weekend.



I guess it's time to take photos somewhere other than my front porch. By the way, that's my son. He appears in all the photos in my Etsy shop. He cringes every time he sees me walking down the hall holding a t shirt.

New Shirts On The Way!

I started printing a new design on women's shirts this morning. Its been awhile since we've had anything new for sale in our Etsy store. I've been holding on to a couple of designs by Justin at Triplemilled (Justin's Myspace page). I was waiting for a new lighter, softer, fitted version of the t shirts we prefer to print on. Our t shirt wholesaler was supposed to be carrying these shirts starting the beginning of this month. They still don't have these shirts available so we went with Alternative Apparel instead. Here's a peek at a print I made this morning. Ultra blue print on a banana colored women's basic tee. The mens version will be a larger version of the same design on a tangerine colored shirt.





I'm also waiting on a new design by new local tattoo artist Robby Myres. The low res sample he sent me looks great!

Printing Again

A guy from Australia ordered ten shirts from us last week, but I had to travel to south Texas for several days for my real job. I hate these unexpected trips. I took the day off work to print his order. It's nice to be printing again.

Welcome to the new Rat Trap Press blog

I'm finally printing again after a short lay-off after the holidays. I opened a shop in Etsy a little while back but didn't really start selling until November. I was really happy with the sales we had in the late part of November till about December 15th when we closed the shop for vacation. Thankfully the Etsy sales paid for our kids Christmas. Since I had a little free time I decided to prepare a couple of new designs.

Here's the screen for an old racing bike design taped up and ready to go.


Test print on a gray t shirt


A highly distressed Tour of Flanders design.