Yes! This is for real! Seriously!

After a few months of non-stop work at Latina, things are finally starting to quiet down a bit and I’m catching up on my side-projects. I have a handful of new shirts completed, along with some other surprises. I really love this particular shirt. The idea was to take two separate, opposing concepts and place them together in one graphic; Life/death, love/hate – that sort of thing. Love creates life, instruments of destruction end it.

I came up with the idea while listening to Sugar Ray’s Songs for Cougars. Hell yeah.

I’ll be working on the flasks again too, having learned a lot from the first time around. For one thing, eye protection is a must! There’s no way I’m walking in to work explaining why one of my eyes are swollen shut ever again. “Yeah, so it’s no big deal; Just some electrolyte fluid for etching steel managed to get in to my eye. Nothing crazy, just this whole electro-chemical reaction thing. No, it’s not bleeding anymore.” There will be several attractive items, aside from the flasks, for “the sophisticated gentleman who does not give a fuck.” Maybe something for the ladies, too.

I’m going to handle the screen-printing of some of the single colored shirts, as well as some of the packaging materials, on my own and will have an outside source handle the multi-color prints and items with complex placements. If I’ve learned one thing over the past couple of years, it would be that it’s crazy to go try and handle everything on your own. Take care of what you’re good at, and trust others to help you in areas you would be better off not doing on your own. I can’t even count how many times this has been said to me, but everyone was right and it’s advice that I’m following from now on.

The whole idea behind ledouche has had the chance to evolve well past it’s roots during the span of time between it’s inception and now. It’s no longer completely pointless, simply poking fun at folks who think too highly of their self-manufactured worlds. Ledouche has grown in to an tongue-in-cheek “fuck you” to everyone. We don’t discriminate.

Check out the “coming soon” page and be sure to reload – there are a few shirt mock ups that will appear at random. More to come!

Introducing the ledouche flask. Can you possibly think of a classier way to meet your daily fluid requirements? Don’t even bother thinking about it, because there isn’t. I have a large batch of flasks arriving in a week or so, and will begin etching the logo in the front and the tagline on the back once they arrive. Expect photos and ordering information soon.

Latina.com underwent a bit of a refresh earlier this month. Cameron Moore, Latina’s Web Developer and I, along with the guys at Limachips put a ton of work in to the project over the past few months, and it was great seeing the newly refreshed layout go up smoothly.

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One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get myself better organized. I’ve always found that keeping to-do lists makes a huge difference, but can never seem to find a system that works well for me. TeaxDeaux, a new to-do list web app by swissmiss and Fictive Kin, is just what I’ve been looking for! It’s really easy to use, and best of all, does just what it should without any unnecessary bells and whistles. Check it out.

TeuxDeux

Here’s the newest type treatment for Ledouche. I’m not satisfied with the coloring just yet, but do think that it has a lot of potential. It reminds me of an Ishihara test for color blindness. I have several other color palettes in mind and will give them a shot over the next few days.

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Every once in a while, I get to do something out of the ordinary for Latina. Something totally unrelated with what I was originally hired to do, which makes working there not suck at all.

Several weeks ago, shortly before Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation, the idea of creating and marketing “Wise Latina” shirts was passed around the office. When the e-commerce component of the idea came my way, it was clear that we had to outsource. Immediately, 2 companies came to mind; MerchDirect and Merchline.

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It’s been some time since I posted an update related to the marshmallows here. I’m always posting stuff on my Facebook page, and then completely forget that not everyone can see what’s there. I’ve been working on quite a bit lately…

I spent some time over the weekend working on my marshmallow graphic, adding some depth and trying to make it more marshmallow-like while keeping the original idea intact. The gradients and other details in the above graphic (which is nowhere near complete) are subtle, but are turning out exactly like what I have in mind. I’ll continue posting updated versions until I’m happy with it. Please comment and let me know what you think as the design progresses!

I’ve been spending a lot free time working on marshmallow recipes that contain no corn syrup and other less desirable ingredients. So much so that I have cut retail sales I’ve been doing out east this summer. I’m hoping to get back to normal pretty soon though. There has been talk about a marshmallow tasting/toasting at the Hamptons Marketplace, and I want to revisit the idea with the owners with the intentions of doing something before Labor Day. I’ve even burned some silkscreens so that I can make some T shirts with the brand logo on them to wear at the event.

A lot of orders have been coming in since June; Mostly for weddings, graduation parties, and other sorts of events. Word of mouth sales have been crazy. I’ve had several orders placed where the conversation starts off like, “I work with this woman whose cousin’s son had some of your marshmallows at a BBQ his girlfriend’s parents threw a couple of weeks ago, and managed to try a couple. I need some for this weekend!” Seriously, it’s crazy!

A friend, Patrick, is going to be coming over to the house next weekend to give me a hand with a couple of new test flavors. We are going to try to make wild cherry marshmallows, and blueberry marshmallows covered in white chocolate. Both are going to be made with natural flavorings, and we’ll probably end up using some colorings to make them visually appealing. I realize that the addition of colorings can be a bit of a contradiction of what I said about removing undesirable ingredients earlier, but you eat with your eyes first right? I guess it’s all about balance. I’m thinking that the wild cherry marshmallows can be 2 tones of red and look similar to the cotton candy ones below.

There are some other things going on, but it’s still to early to talk about them. Hopefully I’ll be able to give some details soon.

I’ll be sure to post some pics of next week’s test batches as soon as they are done!

I just finished refreshing opiate.nu after leaving it for a couple of years. It used to be the domain name for a small design/development business I ran with a few friends for several years, but we’ve each gone our separate ways since. I registered the domain way back in 2001, and just can’t seem to let it go. Anyway, I’m going to use it as a sort of aggregator for myself from now on. It’ll contain feeds from this blog and other services, info on projects I’m working on, along with my resume. Go check it out. It’s fucking yellow as hell!

There are very few things that really bother me. One is wearing suits. I don’t really know why – I like clothing and admit that I spend way too much money on it, but just can’t stand wearing a suit. The feeling I get knowing I’m going to have to wear a suit is reminiscent of the feelings I’d get when sitting in the doctor’s office as a child. You know, that sense you get that you won’t be  leaving that place until you’ve gotten a shot or something that sucks just as much.

My cousin Tomas is getting Married in two weeks, so I’m starting to get those feelings again.

Thankfully, I came across Cyberoptix Tie Lab about a week ago. These ties will take the sting out of wearing a suit. I mean, seriously, just check these out:

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The first printing of ledouche shirts, available to the public, will be produced this spring. I’ve been working on some completely new designs since losing all of my orignal screens back in December, and will be posting them here in the next month or two. All news related to ledouche will be posted to this site’s projects area.

I’ve been playing with the idea of etching the ledouche logo in to flasks. Any opinions? I can’t think of any classier way to get drunk.