DIY or die

Ok, this is just a short, kinda pointless post, inspired by the shirt above. All I wanted to say is that many times, if’ you’ve thought of something you want to put on a one-of-a-kind shirt, taking a marker to a blank shirt is not the wrong way to go. Theese days, way too many will turn to Cafepress or similar services and slap their words in black Times New Roman on a white shirt and end up with something so ugly, it feels like getting stabbed in the eyes, just looking at it. Sure, this guy has an “unprofessional” looking shirt, but trust me, just ’cause some cheap ass online service printed your ugly shirt, doesn’t exactly make it scream “pro” either. Unless you know you’re an ok designer or have your own screen printing stuff, I’d advise you to print your shirts in a more DIY way (why not resort to the old potato print method?) and chances are you’ll end up with a much cooler looking and definitely  more original shirt.

Reality TV

On one hand, this is really kicking in open doors, stating the obvious. On the other hand, there seems to be an endless market for ‘reality tv’ (thankfully, the idiots that seem to be the cornerstone of reality tv are nowhere to be found in my reality), so maybe this is a message that needs to be spread more. It also makes you seem a bit elitist and snobbish, wich is always good. Get it from Lead & Light, here.

Anti-You

So, this was gonna be about Blood of the Young and a couple of their shirts (see above) but then I got tired just trying to figure out what the hell they were and I also discovered the Anti-You shirt was sold out (you can get it here though, and from a million crappy Zazzle-esque places) so… nah.

Happy new year!

No shirts today, just wanted to say Happy New Year to all those of you who read the blog. The stats are steadily rising, which makes me happy. Here’s hoping I still find this worthwhile during 2013, I bet there’ll be a bunch of new great shirts to yap about!

Ola

Blood Diamond (by hippies)

You know, for once, I’ll just shut up and not say anyghing about how the Global Thread Collective is a hippyish thing. I’ll just say this: they print shirts designed by people from all over the world and are open to submissions. This shirt is designed by Granth Thomas, is called “Blood Diamond” and I like it. Get it here, it’s available in a multitude of colours.

Filth and Decay – BE CAREFUL!

Yeah, I know! It’s easy to get fooled. “Filth and Decay” is not a bad name and at first you see all the high contrast devilish imagery and you think you like it. Then you realize it’s just tarot cards put on a shirt and it’s clothing for neo spiritual, new age fucking hippies and then it’s like when you see a photo of a sexy lady and suddenly realize it’s a guy.

Riding the Satan bandwagon

Much as I hate to bash some enterprising person doing their thing on Etsy, and as much as I like shirts with a satanic touch, there’s a lot of shit out there that I just can’t stand. Shit like this. Cutesy satanism, tounge in cheek devil worship, goofy crap. As much as I don’t like religion, even when it’s the dark variety, satanic shirts should be evil and bad ass, not cute and “funny”. Ah, I dunno… I just don’t like this at all.

Tshirtbox – finally a Swedish version of the shirt site you love to hate!

Ok, so why am I even writing about this? There’s a billion websites that sell “funny” shirts (aka shirts that are only funny once. if you’re a moron. no, not mormon). I flip through the first 25 shirts and turn my back forever. So what’s special enough about Tshirtbox that makes me wanna write about it. Well, mainly the fact that they’ve taken the trouble to come up with a few original Swedish prints instead of just copping the regular shirts everyone else sells. They’re still “funny” shirts, but I applaud the effort.

This one, however. Disliking the Swedish rail company (who hasn’t been so great at running trains on time since they were privatized) is a national sport, but still… buying a shirt about it? I hope to god this remains unsold!

So, all in all crappy shirts that are only interesting to Swedes. Not my finest moment as a fashion blogger, huh? I will say this though:, there’s one shirt at that website that I’m actually considering, but I’ll keep that under wraps until I make my mind up.

Enough with the skull and crossbones already!

I know, I know, it’s not like I don’t post skull shirts, but even I start thinking like this sometimes. And even worse – all the “funny” reworkings of the theme. Ok, you found an umpteenth thing nobody ever put crossbones under before. Who cares? So yea, while a top quality skull shirt is never wrong, I sometime wish they were less plentiful, I really do. Get this shirt here.

Return to Blackness

I have written about Blackness before and I am still as confused about them as I am now. They keep ripping off imagery from punk, hardcore and black metal and putting it on their clothes, but I have no idea where they’re coming from – whether they do this out of love for ‘the scene’ or if they’re just cashing in. And I don’t really care either, but I bet others do and I think Blackness are probably right in their catchphrase “most people will hate us”.

Another confusing thing is that they have a bunch of designs on their Facebook page where it’s unclear whether they are, or have ever been for sale, which makes very little busines sense to me, but who am I to judge – I don’t get this at all. Just about the only thing I know is that Blackness have a good, albeit somewhat unoriginal, graphic designer and I like some of their designs a lot.