Ma muse est une pug? Un pug?

I used to speak French rather fluently. It didn't come easily though. I took French in high school- had a terrible teacher (it wasn't a great school if you've noticed a theme). Then I tried again at community college and on my own to prepare myself for my year in France. When I arrived in France, it was like I had never studied at all. They were all speaking so fast, with accents. They weren't using the phrases I learned. I felt like I started as a beginner. For three months I couldn't talk, I started to understand. I felt like an idiot, or trapped in a baby's body. Read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris if you haven't already. It is rather humbling when the 5 year old child you are watching speaks WAY better than you do.

However, I was completely immersed in French and taking language classes taught entirely in French which helped. After 9 months there- I had a dream in French. I stopped having to translate in my head first and speaking came naturally. It was great and I vowed never to lose it. It did not come easy I repeat.

Here I am over 10 years later and I am losing it. Also I am raising two children and not teaching them French from infancy as I had promised myself I would. Not only that, their father speaks French quite well so there is no reason we can't get something going. Except laziness perhaps. I think I will try to find some French friends here. And I am listening to French radio over the internet to keep my comprehension up. I read the blog La Coquette and saw how she is upset her father did not teach her French - especially since he IS French. I think my fear with teaching the kids French is that I will do it wrong. My accent is not perfect, or even close. I don't have that native intuition to tell me whether something is masculine or feminine. It has to be learned and remembered.

Is a pug masculine or feminine? Does each dog breed (poodle, lab, etc) have a specific gender, or are they all masculine- un chien?

I will get back to this later- hopefully when I write about it again I will have made some progress.

Artiste, part 2

Where were we? Oh yes, graduated from college in one of the worst economies expecting to immediately start designing restaurant logos and menus. Instead, I got a job doing catalog production. Stayed a bit too long, but learned a lot. Then, realized that I never spent a year abroad in college and went to live in France for a year as an au pair. I have worked for magazines, web agencies, and finally decided to do my own thing in 2001 and (almost) never looked back.

Current Day
Two small children and a growing design agency which is more than a full-time job. I really don't have time for this pug designing, but I want to move in this direction. I don't always want to be designing for clients. It is a real thrill when people tell me they love my shirts and they buy them. No discussion on whether I could try another font or can they change it, or use another color. Well, sometimes people do want a special color or size but I can live with that.
I finally feel like an artist because I am doing what I want, and I feel inspired to create things. Now I need to start learning those business classes I skipped in college!

What I did today...

Not much billable. I did however:
1. Finally got all my blog entries up.
2. Went into the printer, got more info, ordered the larger size dog shirts.
3. Contacted Oregon Live about my site.

Last night I posted a couple pictures on etsy, I will be taking pictures of all the shirts tomorrow I hope when I get together with my skinny friends and their cute children.

My husband had some advice for me. I need to take a break from this circle of ordering and re-ordering. Any profits go straight into more shirts and I need to make some money from this. I have a great idea for a new tee but it will have to wait.
I am going to work on a new website and look forward to getting this blog out there so I can get feedback from people about the shirts. Don't worry if you wanted a doggie tee, I am going to go ahead and get the large pug shirts since I have promised them to some people.

May 25: My life as an "artiste", part 1

This is going to sound weird. For the first time in my life- I feel like I can ALMOST call myself an artist. As long as I put it in quotes or French it up. Designer/Illustrator, I have no problem with.

Pre-elementary
I have always been a good drawer (I hate that term it sounds like a dresser drawer, I mean draw-er). Probably since I was about three. I started by drawing lady's in old fashioned hoop skirts (a la Little Women) and princesses. I then moved on to cats. My mother nurtured my artistic abilities and sent me to art classes, had my drawings reproduced into holiday cards every year, and encouraged me. I am pretty sure I got my artistic abilities from my mom who is about the most creative person I know. She may not draw much- mostly from not being encouraged I suspect- but she is a great art director.

In elementary school, I remember having sort of a set formula for faces, they looked somewhat barbie-esque. One day when we were supposed to do self portraits, many of the kids asked me to draw theirs. It is sad, that even that young, children give up on their own artistic ability.

In one of my art classes I painted a monochromatic painting of a mountain. It was not bad for that kind of landscape thing. I gave it to my grandparents, and I still remember my grandpa asking if I had "copied" a picture. And he either said, or implied strongly, that real artists have original ideas and can draw from their memory.

Middle School
Can we just skip those years? I have tried to block them out entirely. thanks.

High School
The art teacher was so bad. She had so many 'rules". She came down on me once for drawing individual eyelashes, apparently you can't do that. I was bad at keeping up with my journal- and I still am bad at that. I drew some photos of my boyfriend, and some brides. Hmm, wonder what was on my mind?

College
I took art classes along with my regular courses, and they were by far my favorite. I was amazed when my counselor in the art department told me that there was a profession called graphic designer. (Hey, it was 1988! Aldus just came out with the FIRST Photoshop). I could take the most wonderful classes in order to become one. My friends had to take boring business and math classes. I was taking watercolor, typography and cartooning. They were less envious of me the nights I stayed up all night to finish an art project because if it wasn't done, it just wasn't done. The physical evidence was there- no trying to bluff through a test.
I realized graphics was a good fit for me when I saw that some of the students just didn't understand the concepts of the assignments. But I understood visual communication and was good at it. Although- please never look at some of the god-awful stuff I did during that time.

I think I am going to have continue this later- gotta get the kiddos.
Back later...

May 21: Pug Crawl 2006

Today was Pug Crawl! My family is the best and came to help me out. The weather was supposed to be rainy but it held off until the evening and we had nice weather for the pugs and shirts! Later in the evening it poured, thunder and lightning with hail. We were really lucky.

It was a nice crowd, no idea how many people. We sold aprox 40-45 shirts which made me happy. We were busy enough not to sit down the whole time, but never frantic or anything. Pugly and Cappugcino were the top sellers as usual. I sold a few of the new designs- there were two pugs there named Princess, so of course they had to get something. (-:
I can't believe we sold NO baby onesies. They may do better online or etsy. Amazingly, a lot of people had seen our site already which is pretty neat. It is only a matter of time before i see someone wearing a pug shirt around town.
I met some neat people today which is really the bonus since I rarely get to talk to people face to face. The money we made will probably pay for half of our new order so that is great.

I wish I had a photo to show the masses of pugs and people (supposedly 1,000, so I'm guessing around 350 pugs?). It was a little overwhelming to me- even as a pug lover. My husband refused to go since he is a *gasp!* confirmed pug un-lover. Hater may be too srong. Don't worry mom and dad, Shayna is protected at our house. Going to Pug Crawl would be like a torture to him. In fact, when he tried to place a bet on something with me, I said he would have to go to Pug Crawl if I won and he withdrew. There is a t-shirt I heard about that says, "pugs not drugs". He would choose drugs not pugs. Have I made my point? More about this later when I write about why i don't have my very own pug.

P.S. Don't think too harshly of him, he does have other qualities- good father, husband, yadda yadda...
P.P.S. I took this picture of a gorgeous black pug named Princess who obviously neede a ringer with her name on it. She was at Pug Crawl. I wish this pic had turned out better.

May 12: The newest designs are a the printer...sneak preview

Today I went and checked out the newest pug shirts at the screen printer. I don't think I could have made this order more complicated if I had tried. Well possibly, but it would be hard to do.
I have two different designs, on two different colors of shirts, 6 different styles of shirts, one style uses embroidery.
The embroidery looks better- not sure it is worth the money or not. I hope so!
The big bummer was that the doggie ringer tees I ordered (in size M, 11-25 pounds) look nowhere near large enough for a pug to fit their chubby head through. Well, not Shayna anyway- and she is a slim 18 pounds. Well, puppies can wear them.

I wish I was organized and could make it up to the Seattle pug gala this weekend http://www.seattlepugs.com

Jan 28: is there hope for black pug designs?

I am "selling-out" and going to put some designs on cafe press. I resisted since I like being able to choose special colors, use high-quality silkscreen, and hopefully make a larger profit. However, I just priced some onesies for a new design, and cafe press is the same or cheaper for my costs, and I won't have to order 72 shirts and hope they sell. This printing stuff is expensive, I still am not close to making a profit even with all our sales. We still need to recoup our costs. I think I will test some shirts before I do mass quantity. The only way it seems to make sense to do the silkscreen is if I can sell a lot more shirts or go wholesale and sell to shops.

So here are the new designs I have been working on. I felt I needed a black pug for my collection. Do you know why it took so long? Fawn pugs have contrast in their faces. It is tricky to get detail to show in the black faces. I'm going to try and kill two birds, so to speak, and make this a Valentine's Day shirt as well. I have had this idea in my head for awhile with this pose and expression. The other new design is for babies and toddlers- pj pug. I love the design, but want to test it out first. I have some other baby ideas as well. Actually I have a lot of ideas, and just not enough time.

I'd love to hear your suggestions or comments on the new designs.

Cute for PC Pug lovers (computer- not politically correct)

I ran across this free pug screensaver that shows a pug licking your monitor from the inside. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on Macs. It is a promo from the movie "Must Love Dogs" and is marked not to contain viruses. You can see it by clicking the link (this will not automatically download the screensaver).

http://www.screensavers.com/Home/Movies/New+Releases/Comedy/Must%20+Love+Dogs+-+Pug/index.html?SS_ID=11393_%2012467_12472_98515&aff_id=1004

Jan 12: Etsy

I found this incredible new site, www.etsy.com. An innovative group of guys created an improved eBay-type site for handmade goods. It has cool features, unique items and creative artistic users. Best part of all, listing is super cheap, stays up 6 months, and they only take 3.5% of the final sale price. I posted my pug t-shirts on there and was lucky enough to get featured on the home page for about 3 days. I got over 2,000 hits! I sold 14 shirts in just a few days. The bad news is since I am no longer featured, my hits have slowed to about 20/day and have not had sales.

I can't find much information except that the 4 owners/guys are mostly programmers and launched Etsy in June. There are over 4,000 sellers. The more people find out about this, the more it will grow. While you are there, you can see my shop: http://www.shaynashirts.etsy.com/

Artsy Pugsy is born

I have had a long wait to start this blog. I created a lot of posts that weren't posted because I was trying to figure out what the site should look like, and what it should be named.
So, we'll go with this for now since I am trying to explore my art more- and so far it has been all about pugs. The important thing is to get it started.

I'll go ahead and post the back posts and hope this keeps me motivated to keep momentum and creativity.

You know, I don't think I like this name after all... No, no, FOCUS.