Str8 Jab Photo Shoot

This past weekend Dave and I went over to Florida's west coast to visit family. We had a great weekend and did such a wide mix of things (we threw darts at a pub, went to the rodeo, got tattoos...there will be a whole post about that, and did a photo shoot for Str8 Jab). We are so happy with the way the photos turned out and were finally able to post product pics on the website. Thanks to Janis, Bob and Erik for being our models. I also found out Dave has another talent...he's great with the camera. He was so good at setting up the shots! We came up with lots of ideas for the next shoot and I'm very excited about how things are going. The website still needs work, but since we're doing it all ourselves, I am pleased with it. I've found that the Go Daddy templates are not nearly as easy to work with as they would have you believe. I've felt very limited in where I can place items on the site and there just isn't enough flexibility. I'm going to be exploring the option of building the site with Wordpress and then transferring that to Go Daddy. I've heard that Wordpress works more like a blog (which I like) and I've seen some sites that people have built with it. We've talked about having someone build the site for us, but we're just not ready to invest that kind of money until we start seeing a little more cash flow. We're doing a lot of social networking (check us out on Facebook and Twitter) and trying to build up our fan base. I'm hoping to start a Myspace page this weekend. We have learned a lot about screen printing and the apparel business after going through this first run of shirts. We are discussing what direction we want to go in for the next run. We know we want to add additional colors as option for the shirts. We'd also eventually like to do beanies, hats and hoodies. We're hoping to have some of these additional items in production by the end of April. Once we have those, we are going to select a couple of mixed martial arts events to set up a booth at. For now, we are going to stick with some smaller, non mma events where the vendor fees and the competition are also smaller! I would love to hear from y'all...opinions, comments, suggestions, questions, etc! Doesn't matter if you're a fan of MMA or not as I know Bloggerland has many talented and creative people. Please feel free to contact me through this blog (comments are ALWAYS welcome and appreciated), via email at info@str8jab.com, or on our Facebook fan page for Str8 Jab (click here). I look forward to hearing from you!

PS...for those of you waiting for the follow up to the copper etchings I did...I still haven't gotten around to oxidizing and polishing those pieces yet! Thought I was going to have time to do it last week before we went away for the weekend, but that didn't quite work out. Maybe tonight...

Photos from the Airboat & Swamp Buggy Festival

I'm finally getting around to posting the pics of our booth at the PBC Airboat and Swamp Buggy Festival. Dave had been sick with flu-like symptoms during the week prior to the event. Then on the Friday evening, I started to get it. I managed to hang on through the weekend, but was under the weather for most of the following week. Even now, I'm only feeling like I'm at 80% of my "normal" self! In any case, the festival turned out to be a nice event...well, except for Saturday! The weather was atrocious on Saturday! It was cold, in the mid 40's and overcast...then the rain started. It wasn't so bad at first, but then it really started coming down. Rain showers in Florida are normal...they normally pass in 20-30 minutes, but this one decided to hang around. We tried to hold out, but the rain wasn't letting up, and it eventually started to leak through our pop-up tent (even though it was Scotch-guarded). That along with the cold weather, the fact we were both sick, and the small crowd led us to make the decision to pack up and leave. I hated to do it since it was only 3:30pm and the festival was scheduled to go on until 9:00pm (there was supposed to be a concert), but my table coverings and jewelry, not to mention the Str8 Jab shirts were wet. We went home, dried everything, got some dinner and watched the weather channel. There was no rain in the forecast for Sunday and it was expected to get into the mid 60's. We did decide to go back for Sunday, and I'm glad we did. The weather was as predicted and sunny. And, the band that was supposed to play Saturday night had decided to cancel due to the weather, but played all day Sunday instead. The crowd was great! We had a good response to the Str8 Jab shirts and concept, but not as many sales as we would have liked. The jewelry on the other hand did really well! All in all, it turned out to be a good day. We handed out a lot of business cards for both Shelly's Stuff and Str8 Jab and had lots of good feedback. That is helping us to make some decisions for the future and how we want to proceed with each. And now for the pics! I'm really happy with how we set up the booth. It needs a few minor adjustments, but I was very pleased. I was so happy to find the cow print material...I had been looking for real cowhides, but they were kind of pricey. When I found this material at Jo-ann's, I was so excited because it wasn't the normal black and white cow spots! The cow print may make the setup look a little busy in some of the photos and almost like the jewelry gets lost, but in person it was great. And, thanks to Dave for making my stands. I thought I was going to sand them and give them a coat of varnish, but he suggested I leave them "raw" for that rustic kind of look and I'm glad he did. I'd love to know what you think!!!

The banners...I am so pleased with how these turned out (thanks, Jeanette!)

And what would and airboat & swamp buggy festival be without some airboats...

and some swamp buggies...

Exciting News

I have some exciting news. There are actually two parts to this. The first is that I am going to have a booth at the Palm Beach County Airboat and Swamp Buggy Festival this weekend. It's been a long time (years) since I've done any kind of show with my jewelry so I am pretty nervous (and maybe that's because I'm also still making preparations!). I've put a lot of thought into the presentation of the jewelry and the booth setup. I just hope it pays off. I'll be sure to take pictures and post them once I have a chance. This is a two day show, 10am-9pm Saturday, and 10am-5pm Sunday and its outdoors, so it may be a few days before I recover enough to post the pics.

Here's the second part and this is really the most exciting! Shelly's Stuff will be sharing the booth with our (as in, Dave and me) newest business venture. Announcing...





Dave and I are huge fans of mixed martial arts and all combat sports. We've always wanted to start a business that was built around something we are passionate about. This is definitely it. We are in what we're calling our "research and development" stage. We developed the logo with the help of our neighbor who is a graphic design artist, and currently have a line of shirts (sorry...no pics yet...the shirts just came in yesterday and we've been busy getting ready for this weekend). If we get a good response to the shirts (reading between the lines, that means if we get some cash flow!), we will further develop the line and will be adding more products including hoodies, beanies and shorts to name a few. We did manage to get the website up and going, although it is far from complete. We at least wanted to have something out there so people could find us and realize we are serious about this. You can check it out at http://str8jab.com. Also, we have a Facebook fan page which you can get to by clicking here. If any of you out there in Blogger land are mixed martial arts (ultimate fighting) fans or know people who are, we would greatly appreciate any help in getting our fan base on Facebook going so we can get a unique URL. I'm sure once we get through this initial product launch, we'll be holding some giveaways to show our appreciation for everyone's support. Wish us luck!!!

Shine Fights - MMA Event

Dave and I are HUGE fans of mixed martial arts (i.e., ultimate fighting, cage fighting, etc). We watch almost all of the UFC events on pay-per-view and WEC events on Versus. We would love to attend a live event, but it in our opinion, it's not really worth it unless you are within the first 10 rows of the cage. Unfortunately, those tickets are very pricey (starting at $500 to well into the thousands!) and that doesn't include airfare and hotel. We attended our first live event last December at the UCF Arena in Orlando. I found out about the event weeks after the tickets had been on sale and wasn't able to get tickets anywhere near the cage. I really wanted to attend a live event, and I was able to find seats in the first row of the first level off the floor. They were pretty cheap ($40) and since we wouldn't need a hotel we decided what the heck! Even if the seats sucked, we hadn't spent that much money and we would have a better idea for the next event. This event was put on by Cage Warriors and it was an excellent production. Our seats were pretty good, too. The energy in the air at a live event is incredible...we were definitely hooked. Hence, it then became my task to find more live events that we could attend. Unfortunately, because of the geography of the state of Florida (long and narrow) and the fact that we live in the southern part, its hard to find events that are within a two hour drive. Most productions don't want to hold events in the southern part of the state because it's harder to draw a large crowd. That actually goes for all kinds of events like horse shows, concerts, etc. Finally in June of this year I happened upon an event that was taking place in Miami. Now, Miami is only about an hour and a half drive, but neither Dave or I particularly care to go Dade county (most of it has to do with language...in that part of the state they seem to have forgotten that English is the language spoken in America). But we made an exception because I was able to score cageside seats at a fairly reasonable price! I was so excited...I had waited for this opportunity for so long. Have I mentioned that we are really BIG fans?! This particular event was put on by Shine Fights and while they need to work on some of the details (they started 45 minutes late, the boxes the camera guys stood on were way too big...blocked some of our view, and we had one of their productions guys stand up in front of us for the entire first fight) it was a pretty good event for only their second major production. By the way, I have sent the head guy an e-mail with my suggestions (I watch a lot of these events so I consider myself to be very will informed and my opinions educated!!!). They actually pulled in some pretty big name fighters...guys who had previously fought in the UFC or WEC but whose contracts had been dropped do to a loss. There were also a lot of big names (as far as in the MMA world) in the crowd and corners of the fighters. Specifically Cole Miller who has fought in both the WEC and UFC was there supporting his brother, Micah, Mike Brown, currently the WEC Featherweight champion was there supporting one of his fighters out of the American Top Team gym, and coach Fiore from Matt Hughes H.I.T squad was there supporting one of his guys.