Get your Zen on: Zen circle Enso T-shirts, onesies, bags

 Makai Ola commissioned some shirts with their logo-- the Enso-- on it. I loved the way they turned out, so I made several more. They are each hand painted with permanent fabric paints, using a messy and hands-on screen printing process. Think: mod podge, spray cans, dough scrapers, embroidery hoops. It's a bit wild.

Available in: 

• 6-9 month onesie
• 12 month onesie
• 2T-3T Kid's Tshirt
• Adult Woman's Medium: activewear Danskin V-neck t-shirt, blue
• Adult Large, blue
• Canvas library bag, blue

Turns out? Painting is hard.

I can draw-- I think all those years watching my mom's magical sketches appear in the phone book and on the program during church meetings worked on me. So a likeness? I can capture it. So I thought I'd give painting a whirl!
I've done a little-- some watercolor portraits, a little bit of acrylics, waaay back in the dark ages. Think AP art class, folks. But really, how hard can it be?
Turns out, hard.
Colors that should go together rage against each other? Dark and light is not a matter of more black or more white? Complementary colors clash and shimmer on the edges! But I love the density, the opacity of those lovely thick acrylics-- the squeaky plastic way they dry on the canvas.
I found a book that is a great help: Color by Betty Edwards, the author of the transformative Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Drawing on the Artist Within.
So while I plug away at my color-wheel assignments (is it red-orange? Yellow-orange? Tone? Intensity? Grade? Circumference?) I gave this a shot:

Lihue Ace Craft Fair!

Knotty Honu and Baba's Basement collaborated to create this lovely table at the Lihue Ace Craft fair:

Thanks to everyone who came out to support us! It was our very first experience with craft-fairing. Some take-home lessons:
1. doing a dry run with the set up three days before= very helpful. Thank you etsy blog for the suggestion!
2. Next time, have a better awareness of the customer base! Think "Obaachan" rather than "hip mom."
3. Also, alas, the inventory problem! It seemed like I never had the right design in the right size for my customer. Whoda thought I would need my "I heart Boobies" design in a men's XL? Hmmm, maybe I should have seen that coming.
4. Half-way through the fair a group of folks in Sunday best and lots of leis breezed in. They stopped at our table, we said hello, and we asked if they were getting married. Nope, running for governor! Then, my mental filter failed to kick in. I said, "I thought you were about to break into a Bollywood Dance number!"  Woops. Sorry, potential Governor Aiona...

All in all, it was a great experience, it was fun to have the motivation and the deadline to produce, and it was good to get feedback from real live customers!

Onward and upward.

Pen and Ink original drawings