Leveling Up With The Existential Dread Fish

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I now have a Zazzle shop to showcase some of the art I've done that I'm most proud of. My reasoning is that my art is more of the fun doodle you put on the fridge for a while variety and not so much of the hang on a wall and pay out the butt to frame variety, so why not put it on magnets and other household goods that could have a practical purpose? 

Is there a more practical purpose than housing warm, caffeinated beverages?

But I can't pretend this was all my own idea. CB Archer did most of the legwork and convinced me this would be a fun new adventure (check out his store here). And it was, but not entirely for the reasons I thought. In fact, it seems fitting that CB would be the one to get me started on the Zazzle path because in many ways, it was just like playing a video game.

And like all good games, I had to add hearts.

There were tasks, each of which would give a certain percentage towards completion. Some were fairly easy, such as "create 10 items," while others, like "leave 5 comments" took me forever. But, eventually, I got my 100% on both my store and my personal profile. What did I win? Well, the knowledge that I'm on my way to having a nice shop set up. 

Vlad doesn't need your validation!
(But he did insist on being featured in the shop)

According to Zazzle, a successful shop has over 100 designs and at least 1000 items for sale. I don't think I've got nearly 100 items total just yet, but I would like to think that by now, you all know my feelings on having my success defined by others.

In case you haven't figured out by now, I'm totally shamelessly plugging my stuff in this post. Oh, and this design looks pretty rad on a magnet.

And yet, I'm also usually inspired by a challenge. Could I really ever come up with 100 designs I like? Would my wrist hold up? And could I find at least 10 items to showcase with each design?

A better question is, do I have 100 good puns to share?

At the moment, I've got a small number of constants: mugs, buttons, magnets, stickers, and postcards. And then I've got a handful of items that could be considered "out there."

No, there is absolutely nothing out there about an Existential Dread Fish chili bowl.

While I admit, it's fun to drop my doodles onto all kinds of strange objects, I really can't see any reason to just throw any old thing up there. In fact, I haven't done any tshirts yet because I've yet to design something I like and honestly, there are just TOO MANY choices of materials and manufacturers. For that I'm likely to try another service.

Steampunktopus thinks he's too classy to be on a plain T-shirt anyway.

But as I've stated before, I'm not looking to start yet another business that is going to take up a lot of my time. This is a lot of fun and I do like the fact that folks might potentially find my art and like it enough to buy a postcard or magnet.

Some postcards are scarier than others.

Heck, I may have even found a cure for summer brain. If nothing else, coming up with fun and somewhat silly product descriptions has been a lot of fun. And just as CB inspired me, I've inspired Shoshanah Marohn to start a shop too, which has come full circle since she inspired me to draw. Actually, I think we've been inspiring each other for nearly ten years now and that's crazy considering we have never actually met. Anyway, check out her shop here.

I'll just leave this notebook here to remind myself that writing will happen again, eventually.

I can't say for sure that I'll ever get to 1000 products, but the store will always be a work in progress. I'm definitely going to be adding a bunch of robots and I might even try making some customizable items for the upcoming holidays. Oh and yeah, The Existential Dread Fish is absolutely going to be my breakout star of the show. How could it not?

I'm totally here for you, but also, I'm iconic.