So, the RENEGADE Brooklyn vendor maps have been released, and wow, your man has got a LOT of pressure on him now. My spot in the fair is second only to Etsy, who always get the best spot since they’re essentially a huge crafter organization/network/marketplace (which I may also start selling on, thanks to meeting several nice members of the gang and wanting to give it a shot). For serious, people: you walk in and look slightly to your left, and BOOM. My mustache’d face:

I probably won’t be holding a huge beer bong (but, never say never), but I will probably have some dumb expression on my face and I will still be kinda fat (Mom and Dad, I live in a house with seven chefs in training; at least I managed to quit smoking, and I will start exercising more. Love you!).

I’m at the cap of a huge aisle of vendors, just to the left of the entrance. It is going to be completely sick.

I’ve been meaning to email the Renegade gang and thank them for giving me such a ridiculous spot; I imagine they wanted to throw me a bone for a number of reasons, such as “SEIBEI is the fucking boss”, but in all honesty it’s probably due to getting a cashbox with nearly $3000 in it stolen from me at their show last year in Chicago, so they wanted to help me recoup my losses from a simple dumb mistake of using a cashbox instead of a series of fanny packs.

So now it’s time to come up with the ILLEST booth ever. There’s a month left until the show and there’s so much to be done: I’m working with a few more guest artists on some new designs, and hopefully one or two of them will be ready in time for the show, I’m working on some new ones myself, I need to finish designing some belts so I can get those made, and there may be a new colorway or two of some of your favorite designs. So get ready, Brooklyn!

In other news, things are ridiculously hectic, I’m having trouble keeping some stuff in stock, there are production problems with the new ICE WIZARD hoodies that will be resolved by next week, and I’ve recently been picked up by a number of new retailers who hopefully aren’t too mad about the slight delay my wrecked schedule has caused, and approached by even more retailers.

In great news, one of my best friends, Phil, is moving up from VA to NY and into our house on Monday! Plus, he’s bringing another great friend, Josh, the designer of this very website, up to hang out for awhile too! RAAAAAAAAD!

My friend Suzy up in Boston sent me a message on Facebook once saying something along the lines of OMG YOUR NEW STUFF LOOKS GREAT HAVE YOU HEARD OF JOHNNY CUPCAKES? I’M KIND OF OBSESSED WITH HIM; YOU CAN BE MY LATEST CONVERT, to which I responded with this photo of a trip to Boston I took last year:

Man, I look like a tool.

Anyway, the other day I got this message from Johnny Cupcakes himself which made me feel pretty rad:

Hey,

Best,
Johnny

AWWWWWW thanks guy! Johnny is an unbelievably busy dude, and one of the biggest names in the indie t-shirt game, so I’m feeling pretty rad about it.

I was going to start this post off with a nice picture of my mom, but since I don’t have all of my photos on my computer, the only photo that I have is her looking exasperated while she and my dad were dropping me off at the airport before I left for Japan in 2003.

Now that I live in New York, I don’t really get to see my mom (or anyone else in my family, for that matter) too often, so on days like this especially I really miss her. She’s had my back since day one - not like my entire family hasn’t been incredibly supportive, and that I don’t miss the rest of them too, but I’d like nothing more than to just have a nice dinner over at her place with her and my stepdad like I used to do all the time when I lived in Charlottesville. Today I got out of the house for a bit and saw all kinds of kids out with their families, and it made me realize how much I miss mine.

But hey, if I keep my head up and keep working hard, hopefully I’ll be able to afford more trips down there to see them all, so here’s hoping. I love you Mom!

The BUST Spring Fling Craftacular was awesome - it was a good start to the craft show season, which really starts to gear up about this time of year.

Rather than bore you with dumb photos of the show itself, I’ll show you some photos from the awesome Prom Photo Booth! I managed to sneak away from the booth when my friends Seth, Zeke, and Jeff came to visit:

Here’s my friend Ray, who is a student at the CIA and is staying in our house for the time being, and me, making the face I make in every picture ever.

Here’s Jeff, Seth, Zeke, and me. I haven’t seen these dudes in awhile! We all went to school together back in the day at UVA (though I didn’t really get to know any of these guys until after I graduated), and are all going to try and see each other more now that we’re all in the Northeast.

And here’s a photo of me and Zeke. I kind of like the face I’m making here.

Anyway, it was a great day: I met and talked for awhile with Sarah of POST EXPOSE and urban inks, who was super nice and great to talk to; we know a lot of the same people in the game and share a huge art boner for The Little Friends of Printmaking, amongst others. We’re gonna hang out some over the summer and hopefully work on some stuff together in the future.

We also met Rebecca of Rar Rar Press, who makes awesome letterpress cards and posters. Most of the stuff I traded her for has giant cusses on it, so here’s a picture of one of her postcards that is totally cuss-free:

I also met Chanel of Junkprints, whose work is really good and whose sense of composition is fucking phenomenal; I don’t have a picture I scored of her poster yet but you’ll see it soon enough. It’s like collages didn’t know what the fuck to do until she showed up.

I also got to see my man Kevin from SquidFire - I hadn’t seen any new stuff from them in months, but they were just holding off until craft season. Their new stuff is really great; hopefully they’ll put it online soon. Also was a table down from my dudes and ladies of Daydream Silkscreen, whose work gets more and more impressive and ridiculous every time I see them. If for some reason I could never do SEIBEI work again, I’d wanna run with their crew.

Also, I got interviewed for BUST! This is actually a reasonably big deal. I don’t know how many people got interviewed, but the only interviews I saw going down were with me and Chanel of Junkprints. Also, I’m not sure if it’s gonna be online, or in the magazine (I think the latter), but either way it should be some good exposure. I blabbed into a microrecorder for awhile about all kinds of stuff - artists I like, the indie craft circuit, themes of SEIBEI, how much Perfect Strangers rules, etc. So, here’s hoping they don’t think I’m a total madman and decide to actually publish it.

At the end of the day, Ray and I loaded up the car and headed back to Poughkeepsie, where our friends were waiting for us with smoked brisket, potatoes, and some tall, ice-cold beers. I love my housemates! I finally have housemates now, and it’s ridiculous. More on that later.

BUST SPRING FLING CRAFTACULAR!

Today, 11 - 9, at the Warsaw in Brooklyn, which is at 261 Driggs Ave. Unfortunately, I’m still not on the public vendor list, but it will be nice to surprise people. NYC has always had a lot of love for SEIBEI, so I think it’ll be a nice surprise.

I’m slightly ill-prepared due to having to move in two new housemates yesterday (yes!!!); we celebrated by staying up late and kickin’ back with a few beers.

Alright, time to fold some more shirts, shove all these cases in my car, and HIT THE ROAD!

SATURDAY APRIL 19TH: I’ll be showing off my tees, trying to recruit for the Intramural Zombie Hunting League, and probably passing out free cookies in Boston, MA at FEAST OF FLESH VI!

If you’re around Brookline, I’ll be tabling at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, so stop by!

SUNDAY APRIL 27TH: Guess what, baby? It turns out that I managed to score a spot in the BUST SPRING FLING CRAFTACULAR! This is going down at the Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY, and it’s my first major show of the season, and I can’t WAIT. There are only gonna be like 50 vendors at this one, so the competition was ultra-tight, but somehow I charmed my way in, I guess.

I won’t really be selling anything at the FEAST OF FLESH, just showing stuff off and trying to make friends, but at the SPRING FLING CRAFTACULAR you can expect the usual: lower prices across the board, the latest releases, and my smiling face.

Also, this is a little down the road, but I’ll also be at RENEGADE BROOKLYN on June 14th and 15th at the McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, NY. RENEGADE BROOKLYN was my first big show, and a real turning point for me personally. Let me tell you a little story…

A few months before I moved up to New York last year, I did my last craft show in Virginia, the Richmond Craft Mafia’s Spring Bada Bing. The event was heavily promoted, and there was a lot of talk about how awesome it was going to be, and I was really stoked. I had my friends Josh and Lauren helping me work the table, and we were ready to rock.

Apart from getting to see some of my friends in Richmond that I didn’t get to see that often, the day was a complete waste. There was little traffic, and we barely sold anything. I was completely bummed about it, and just felt like something must be wrong with my work. I had recently been accepted to RENEGADE BROOKLYN, and was so depressed over the Spring Bada Bing that I seriously considered dropping out of the show and getting a refund on my booth money. Fortunately, I decided to suck it up and give it a shot, because we ended up outselling most of the other tents there, and plenty of people who’d been in the game longer. Kate worked a booth with me for the first time ever, and we could barely keep up with the demand. It was amazing. So many new friends, so many new fans.

Anyway, I just finished making about 80 zombie hunter shirts at once, which is a new record for me, because I had to play some serious catch up, so it’s getting harder for me to be coherent. I guess the moral of the story is that you’ve got to tough it out if you want to be successful?

There is also a pretty nice rundown of the new releases by Andy over at Hide Your Arms, and a nice mention over at T addict - thanks guys!

On that note, I’m gonna gore up a few more shirts, and then probably pass out on the couch watching Perfect Strangers. TOTALLY AWESOMMMMMMME FRIDAY NIIIIIIIIIGHT.

Don’t think I’ve become a poet - the title is from the theme song for Perfect Strangers, which I’ve been watching a bit of lately.

Anyway, you may notice that we’ve got ALL NEW STUFF in the shop, and that I’ve been giving the other model shots a bit of a facelift. This is going to continue; I’ve been meaning to expand the about page as well so I’ll probably throw some FAQs and links to interviews etc in there.

So, what else is new?

Due to the recent lack of a computer in my house, I’ve fallen a bit behind, but am playing some serious catch up. Also, I’ve been forced to draw more, which has been great - I’ve drawn stuff for a few new shirts and kicked out some great concepts for things to release later on this year.

I’ll be posting a lot more now, including some photos of the new house (it is SO WEIRD because at the end of the month I’ll have six housemates, with a seventh to follow in May, and Kate coming here whenever she has time off, but for the past two weeks I have lived ALL BY MYSELF - there aren’t even any ghosts here that I know of!) and the new SEIBEI HQ, but for now here is a video of my boy GaTa sporting some of his SEIBEI gear.

Of course, the video is him going on about how rad Johnny Cupcakes is, but it’s nice that he’s rocking his Sandwich Dino while he lavishes praise on JC (presumably, cause I haven’t watched the video all the way through yet). He also told me that he wore some of my stuff on MTV’s Spring Break - did anyone catch this?

Alright, I’ve been working all day today, so I’m going to take a breather to watch the latest South Park and maybe some Top Chef and then back to it.

Due to the demise of my computer and moving in, things have been seriously delayed, which is a bummer and a half (or possibly two whole bummers).

The computer is off being repaired (or hopefully outright replaced), and apart from the fact that I am completely cut off from the internet and my business when I leave work and return to the new SEIBEI headquarters, it’s fantastic. Zombie Hunter shirts are being taken to a whole new level now that I have a whole section of a workshop to do them in and can fling ink with (relatively) reckless abandon. I’m definitely far more organized, and once I get a computer in there, brace yourself.

New products should hopefully be online at the end of this week or early the next, depending on when I receive the final model shots.

So, today I started moving stuff to our new house. How exciting! I can’t wait to get settled in to our new headquarters!

I worked all day at the shop, stayed after a little bit to work on some Zombie Hunter shirts, then moved three loads of stuff between our apartment and our new place. I ate dinner in the car. Now I’m going to pack some orders over a tall, frosty glass of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi - I’m addicted to this stuff now. I’m a Coke man by trade, but Cherry Coke Zero is hard to find in two liters, whereas Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi seems omnipresent.

I’m going to pack up as many orders as I can, and then I need a few days to get everything together at the new place, so things will be moving a bit more slowly.

About a year ago, Kate told me that she’d heard it was physically impossible to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon all in one go, so I gave it a shot and basically got it right.

Today at work I did it for the second time, and under the watchful eyes of my co-workers, God, and the Internet, I assure you that it IS possible, albeit difficult and pretty gross.

PS - THE SPICE IS LIFE!