T-Shirts!!!

Three exclamations worth!!!

I have wanted to make t-shirts since I first began Flecks of Art in 2012. I even had several ideas together and mocked up on the site. I did not take the time to make it happen. There were print on demand services then, they just did not seem quite so easy as they are now. I was reading on the side gigs blog about making on demand t-shirts as a way to make side money and I was intrigued. I put it off and put it off, as I often do, until I finally made my Amazon Merch account. The terms of that were a bit off-putting, such as rights to the designs and all manner of things that one risks letting go of for global reach.

I put a few designs up there and still have one of my original shirt ideas and a variation on an idea that I had been kicking about for a few years now. The Trilobite Quote shirt I was inspired to listening to A Brief History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, while I was driving back to Northern Kentucky from Colorado in my grandmother’s Honda Accord. The other shirt is not so inspired, it’s still out there though, Namaste Gal was not my original thought nor direction. I feel torn on this one, as on the one hand, no one else really has taken this brand to town, and I am not a “gal” and so it feels a bit disingenuous for me to run with, so it sits out there as just what it is.

I did not feel like I was getting any sort of exposure on Amazon, I couldn’t find my t-shirts if I searched for them. I could find them if I searched Savored Esoteric, which was fine, it also may have been an algorithmic result that gave me that result, not an organic one, I am not sure.

Not being happy with Amazon as a partner and not wanting to surrender my rights and more importantly, being unsure of the quality of the product, I searched for other solutions. I did a search for reviews of Amazon’s quality and the results were not encouraging, though I only have this on hearsay. I then did a search on who was the best option for print on demand shirts. Which led me to Printify, I have not verified their quality yet, I am also not out any money to use their tools. They also allowed a connection to my Etsy store, which had been languishing for almost seven years, forgotten and with no product to add.

I started with designs that I wanted, shirts that I have wanted to have. I also wanted to ensure since they were my branded designs, they stayed under my umbrella and didn’t create any weirdness with Amazon. I made my shirts, they look nice. I have not yet seen physical product, soon though, soon.

Click the images above to go to my Etsy store to see color options, other designs, and to get your own.

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