Around printing a thousand totes for a charity, and all the merch for Supersonic Festival, we’ve somehow also found to time to print these lovely things recently, and more would you believe!
Robbie Manson, on very, very nice American Apparel tri-blend athletic track shirts
…and some none-T-shirt items
…and last but by no means least,
Stupidly forgot to take a photo of these awesome tour posters designed by Dan Bowden. Here’s one sitting in the drying rack. The pink was so bright!
Huge congratulations to THE ARTERIES, who’s second full length album is out today! We teamed up with Specialist Subject Records who have put out the record, and printed T-shirts for the pre-orders
The Arteries have been a bit quiet lately, probably because they are preparing to smash us in the face with a new record in the near future- but I can’t be certain. But still, even if they aren’t playing any shows for a little while, the boys still understand the need to keep your beer cold on a hot summers day, so we have printed some koozies for them. They look awesome but the lime ones sure did fuck with my sewing machine. Like all our koozies, they were made and cut out in America, printed (with waterbased inks) and sewn up in our studio.
I have mentioned a few times now that on Saturday I went to Swansea to see Chuck Ragan, The Arteries, Bangers and Livers and Lungs. It was a completely amazing night and all the support bands were totally rad, and the headliner, well, he just blew everyone away, it was awesome. Here are some great photos of the night.
Anyway, at the show I finally got to meet my ‘business penpal’ Nathan Blaker, who runs an amazing little shop called No Guts No Glory in Exeter. Me and Nath have been in contact for a few months now, both about the same age, both self-employed, with many mutual friends, and he has been a great person to share experiences with as we are trying to make our little business’ work.
Recently we have been throwing around some ideas about putting out a zine, to be called ‘The DIY Times’. We not only share our experiences (ie. me and Sam running GET A GRIP), but many other peoples’ experiences at being self-employed or running something passionately alongside their day-job, doing something that they regard more than ‘just a hobby’. So far we have got Southsea DIY, Alex Curtis and AMMO Magazine onboard, with loads of other people and bands expressing interest about getting involved. We are really rather excited that things are starting to happen and with any luck it will be appearing in independent shops and shows around the UK in a few weeks.
Anyway, we did a little T-shirt swap and here is me sat on a table wearing my No Guts No Glory shirt today. I feel bad that I hate having my photo taken and it is rubbish, and also that Nath is bound to have a really awesome photo as he is a great photographer, but what the hell, I print T-shirts not model for a living.
Moral of the blog post, check out NGNG, buy things from their shop, add them on FACEBOOK, go visit Nathan if you are ever in Exeter and look out for The DIY Times.
Jamie from The Arteries asked us if we could find some girly vests for the female fans of the band. We found these from one of our suppliers and I, as a girl, was really impressed with the style and fit of them! It’s not often you get a band who want to do something a little different to standard T-shirts. Printed with a great design that will soon be on koozies too! Jamie has a great blog showing all the design work he does for bands and some cool photography too.
Chuck Ragan is taking a night off a massive tour with Frank Turner and Crazy Arm to play a show in Swansea with The Arteries and Bangers Saturday night. Jamie has designed a great poster for the show, which we’ve printed. The Arteries and Bangers are playing the show as part of their own tour too, and Jamie and Rhys are screen printing posters for it- I can’t wait to pick one up for myself.
The Arteries are pretty much one of my favourite bands, me and Sam argue about them, he doesn’t like them (he is wrong). I think I have seen them play about a million times in the last year, most memorably in someone’s bedroom in a flat in Kingston, and I will also be seeing them one more time in 2009 on Sunday playing at Punk n Bowl III (I think I should point out that I have seen them play a lot of times at shows where my boyfriend’s band are playing, not because I am some weird groupie), they are also all very nice guys to hang out with. If you haven’t heard of them, you can find their blog here and find out more about them. They also have a song on Brits Abroad, along with Bangers, OK Pilot and Brothers.
ANYWAY, we printed some pretty sweet shirts for them this week and we are also printing some hoodies for them (which I have to some how get to London this weekend) which I’ll put photos up of soon…or edit this post a week later with the photos added.
GET A GRIP 
