Bolo shirt is finished (and some other stuff).

Well I finished the Bolo Shirt and it came out pretty awesome. I’ll be even more excited if someone else appreciates it as much as I do. I know one thing, there are no other Bolo shirts, so this is it.

I think I’m also going to do one in red.

Next week I am thinking of doing another obscure t-shirt. I think I am going to start a mini-line of action film villain shirts, but only the greatest villains that ever graced the screens. My next tribute will go to the evil Tong Po.

I am also putting on deck a Dolph Lundgren “Andrew Scott” shirt from universal soldier which I want him to be seen wearing the necklace of ears. Ill have designs up this week or next. Stay tuned!

A Dolph shirt is overdue.

April 19, 2011 0

Bolo

Last night I had a vision. Anyone who knows action films will know who this man is. When the idea came to me I rushed online to see if it had been done before. I could not find a single shirt. Nobody had paid tribute to one of the greatest martial arts villains of all time, Bolo Yeung.

I rushed to my computer when I got home and started to design the shirt I wanted. This wasn’t going to be something I was going to draw free hand, I basically took a closeup of his face and pulled out the color. I placed the symbol for warrior up in the corner and then simply placed Bolo at the bottom. I wanted to keep it simple. I smoothed out the picture by hand with some black ink, scanned it and then prepared it for my transparency. I can’t wait to print this shirt, I love the design.

April 18, 2011 0

Busy Weekend!

This weekend was pretty busy. Seeing as I did nothing creative this weekend, I figured i might as well write about the weekend. On Friday I finished work early itching for a delicious beverage. Nicole and I headed down to one of our favorite places for beer, The Blue Monk. It’s a Belgian beer garden with about 50 beers on tap. I am not a Belgian beer drinker, in fact I hate Belgian beer, but Nicole likes it and there is usually a delicious I.P.A. of sorts on tap that I can enjoy. I like my beer to be hop overload. Usually at night its almost impossible to get in there at night because its the best place to get beer in the city, so getting there at 3:00pm was quiet and relaxing.

Hopfenstark Post Colonial I.P.A.


When the Middle Ages truck is parked OUTSIDE, that means its time for me to go INSIDE.

At night we made BBQ Seitan on onion rolls with salt potatoes. We felt we should probably eat in because this weekend was going to involve spending money. The Sabres are in the playoffs and when that happens, we live it up!

Nicole slicing and dicing

After dinner we watched “In the Company of Men”. Its one of my personal favorites and Nicole has never seen it. The movie is dark comedy about these two business men that hate the way women go through men like they are nothing. They both come up with a horrific plan to find a vulnerable woman, make her fall in love with them, and then destroy her emotionally. Its totally out there but I enjoy it ever time I see it.

Saturday was Sabres Day. 5:00pm game at one of our favorite playoff hot spot, Gramma Mora’s. We enjoy catching the playoffs because we always get a seat at the bar right in front of the TV and its some of the best Mexican food in Buffalo. We had a good time there as always even though we lost the game. Minus the insane amount of penalties we received in the second period, it was an awesome game that we could have won if we didn’t push our luck in the second. We will take them on Monday.


This was the Garden Platter which was delicious. I don’t remember exactly what was in it but it went down fast and I was satisfied. Above the Garden Platter is the Guacamole Nacho platter Nicole ordered.

We had met our friends Molly and Patrick at the restaurant and after the game we came back to our apartment for some boardgames. We usually play Apples to Apples which is usually fun but then I broke out an intense oldie but goodie…..Jenga. It was an intense session of skillfully removing blocks one at a time, hoping not destroy the fragile foundation that it created as each piece gets removed from the foundation and placed onto the top. We then ended the night with a game of 90’s trivial pursuit where Nicole and I mounted a comeback and then I blew the game at the end by asking Patrick a question that he answered before I even finished asking the question.
It was a fun weekend and I’m looking forward to next week/weekend. More playoff games, a fundraiser to attend for a new micro brewery, and my parents visiting. I should have some new ideas and shirts to present this week and I have already been brainstorming and am ready to do something sweet.

April 17, 2011 0

Some news….

The eBay store has been overhauled and now has the feature to actually select a size instead of emailing me with a size after the purchase has been made. I can’t even begin to tell you how much easier this will make things. It is amazing how many people will order a shirt not knowing what size they are ordering, and just assuming I know which one they need. Those days are over, now they can select the size and I will get it.
My girlfriend Nicole has been jobless for a few months because she had been laid off and things were getting tough. Not in our relationship or anything like that, but more her morale had been down from not being able to find a job. Today she accepted a job offer in her field and things are now on the upswing. Tonight we are going to see a film downtown about the people from Burma moving to Buffalo. We are really interested in seeing this movie because we actually live in the area that they are all moving to.

April 13, 2011 0

New Shirt!

After about a week, I have completed the Charles Bronson shirt. This is the newest addition of my action hero line of clothing. The screen came out awesome and the shirt printed out just the way that I wanted it to. This will be online soon in all of my shops in both Indigo blue and Natural.

April 12, 2011 0

Back from Rochester

The weekend flew by but I managed to get a lot done. I had to go back to Rochester, where I am from, so that I could get some help from my financial adviser (my step-dad) with my taxes. This is the first year that I am filing my taxes with the business so I wanted to make sure I was doing everything correctly. Our trips to Rochester are usually a lot of fun, usually involving great drinks, food and lots of laughs. This weekend was no different as Nicole and I, along with my mom and step-dad, went to the Owl House for dinner. The Owl House is amazing and I wish Buffalo had something similar. In Buffalo, we have Merge which is basically what the Owl House would be it did everything wrong. The food at Merge is bland, boring, and unimaginative. The place just lacks anything that would make it special. The food and drinks at the Owl House are just awesome. Although they didn’t have the BBQ braised Seitan that I ate the last time I was there (which was by far my favorite), I had a grilled cheese sandwich that was phenomenal. It was grilled Daiya cheese with mashed potatoes and asparagus right on the sandwich. That accompanied by a delicious Black IPA made for a great dinner. My mother even tried the grilled cheese with the Daiya cheese (which is a vegan cheese) which is big for her because she is hesitant to try vegetarian things. Nicole had this gorganzola mushroom pizza that was also pretty delicious. She gets this one drink that they make which I believe is called the Smoke Monster. Its basically a Bloody Mary with liquid smoke. It is out of this world.
Good food, family, and two days in a row of Sabres victories clinching a playoff spot makes for a great weekend but its time to get back to work! Orders have been constant and my new screen is ready to form into Charles Bronson! I will have pictures when it is completed.

Izzy gets sad over everything, even Sabres victories.

April 11, 2011 0

Awesome weather!

The weather here has been terrible for a while now. Rainy, gloomy days mixed with cold flurries occasionally. It has not been pleasant here at all. Yesterday the weather was amazing. The sun was shining bright and people were out and about enjoying a break from the gloom. Nicole, Ric, and I decided to go for a stroll through the neighborhood. We live near the Elmwood Village which is filled with all kinds of little shops and a wide variety of people. Ric has put on some winter weight so its good to get his chubby fanny into gear. I decided to sport the Vulcan sweatshirt from our new line of hoodies. We took a few pictures of the neighborhood along the way.


This is Ric’s Turf

April 8, 2011 0

Bronson Shirt!

I am getting more and more excited as I have finished the rough draft for my screen. Its almost done, I just need to do some cleaning up on photoshop. I decided to go the route of my Vulcan shirt where I have something straight to the point below the famous vigilante: Justice. I’m very anxious to get the screen done for this and to get this onto a shirt as soon as possible!

April 7, 2011 0

Morrissey Onesie

Now that we have our new blog I am able to show more of the creative process behind some of the shirt/onesie designs we come up with here. Originally I wanted to so a Morrissey baby onesie because the idea of someone so dramatic and overly emotional on a baby amused me. I love the Smiths so this was something I wanted to pursue. I started my basic sketch and then gave it some ink and the overall image i was very happy with.

When I was finished my amazing girlfriend recommended adding the lyric “Please, please, please let me get what I want.” which I viewed as nothing short of brilliant. I decided to go with an average looking handwritten style cursive and this was the finished product:

April 6, 2011 0

New T-shirt Designs on Hold.

With the new house on the horizon and a planned trip out of town, I’ve decided I’m going to halt and new designs for my adult t-shirts until I get moved in to the new workspace. My girlfriend had gotten me some awesome new equipment this past Christmas, so I want to start utilizing that. This will also give me time to research and design my next shirt. For years I have playing with the idea of making a shirt dedicated to the most unattractive action hero ever, Charles Bronson. With unforgettable lines like, “Do you like Jesus? Well your about to meet him.”, Bronson was always one of my favorites and I have yet to find a shirt that does him justice. All of the shirts I find are just different variations of the same image and I really want to try something different on this one.

If you love action films and you want to see a film that has influenced a great deal of them, watch “Death Wish”. To this day it is truly a masterpiece. I will be posting updates of the artwork as it comes along.

April 4, 2011 0

Author: Aaron F.