January 27, 2012 by photozz
Short post, too tired…. Check this out! We learned some new tricks with the laser cutter tonight.The listing is going up in the store for these now.
We also had a few other good ideas we thought to try
I think they worked out pretty well and Jack is busy making listings as I pass out on the couch.
Category blog, geekery | Tags: Forefly,Skyrim,Team Fortress,video game | No Comments
January 25, 2012 by photozz
Hey there! Sorry for the blackout. The Lovesick server was offline for over a week due to some malicious hackery causing a flood of spam traffic. Since we host the server out of our home and not a service of some kind it means that I have to dig in and deal with this kind of @sshattery myself before Time Warner gets all ‘oh noes’ about it and starts sending me nasty emails. This means that repairs sometimes takes longer than someone who, you know, has an idea what they are doing. I think we now have hardened things up to the point it should no longer be an issue, but I’ll be watching. 0.0
Anywho, New stuff! We have been working on figuring out the quirks on our new machines and we have started to get results. Check out some of the goodies below and get ready for some new product listings in the Etsy store.
We have also begun using heat press vinyl and plastisol transfers for some of our shorter run shirts. We are really excited about this as the quality of the final shirt in color registration, opacity of color and the speed we can generate product is ten times faster than our previous process. Check it out,
I would also like to note that we have been seeing a bunch of people using the coupon code we sent out with our Casually Butterfly Everything shirts and I wanted to express how grateful we are for the return business. We can’t do this without you. Seriously.
Late addition. Recently there was a Regretsy meetup in Los Angeles. April Winchel asked for goodies to put together a gift bag for the attendees. LSR as happy to oblige. We spent some time thinking of something appropriate to send. We eventually hit upon the perfect thing.
Goatse stickers. We sent 100 pairs. You can see the results here
Afterwards, we actually had a request or two for these. As of now, they are available in the LSR Etsy store.
Category blog | Tags: | No Comments
December 28, 2011 by photozz
OK, so we’re a few days early.
First, we want to sincerely thank everyone (with a special shout out to Reddit) who has expressed even the remotest support for us. It would be impossible to do any of this without you. We have had a great deal of good fortune and great luck and we are working hard to keep it going in the new year.
First things first, we have entered into a non-exclusive memorandum of understanding (contract thingie) with Bustedtees.com to sell a few of our t-shirt designs. This means we’re finally “legit” now and we have a genuine reporting-to-the-IRS source of income. We are still selling the designs ourselves in our Etsy store and we maintain the copyrights, but we’re finally getting some traction.
Speaking of our Etsy shop, we’re going to be redesigning our listings and getting new product photos up. We are also working on new product designs and merchandise ideas. The shop is a little sparse right now as we are working on them as we speak. We should have it all done shortly.
Throughout 2011, Jackie and I had a lot of discussions around what equipment we would like to get and what we could do with it. This involved lots of sitting around restaurants making lists, Lots of internet research and no small amount of math. After a startlingly good Nov/Dec, we just decided the hell with it and we bought it all. There was some hefty spikes of buyers remorse and anxiety, but we powered on through. Besides, the boxes are open, receipts are thrown away and there is no going back now. These damm things have to pay for themselves somehow.
What screwy things do we have in the works? well, here’s a few preview shots.
Category blog | Tags: | No Comments
December 1, 2011 by jackie
If you are receiving this email, you might be the lucky owner of one (or several) of these shirts:
Before we go on to the updates, we’d like to once again thank you for your purchase and support! We’ve received hundreds of kind notes and nearly 2000 orders for this shirt in less than a week, and we could not be more grateful to you! You can read a more detailed thank you with pictures and gushing and all that! Now, on to the…
Updates Regarding Your Orders
We’ve been getting quite a few emails from you guys with questions and concerns that we’d like to address here. We’re trying to keep up with the volume of business and communication that we’ve been flooded with since Reddit bestowed its massive presence upon us, and we figured writing a blog would be the easiest way to air everything out. We’ll address the most frequently asked questions first!
FAQ
Q1: Have you shipped my shirt yet? No? WHY THE HELL NOT? >:|
Thanks to the awesome power of Reddit, we here at Lovesick Robot Studios watched the number of orders for this shirt reach roughly 1800 in about 72 hours. This is both incredible and frightening for us, because Lovesick Robot Studios is a small business comprised of two people and five cats (it should also be noted that cats make terrible employees). We can’t exactly afford to hire help, either, since we offered the shirts at a price that was barely above what it costs to make them. This, in addition to ordering 2000+ shirts of different sizes, new(ish) equipment that will allow us to handle the volume of orders we need to fill and being in the process of organizing everything, things are off to a somewhat slow start.
What I CAN tell you, though, is that we now have a manual 4-color press set up in our 100sq. ft. work room, and we’re going to start printing these shirts TODAY so we can start shipping things out! We’re doing things in chronological order, so the earlier you ordered, the sooner you’ll get your shirt. Our current estimated shipping time for everything is 1-4 weeks. It’s kind of a bummer, but we’re doing our damndest to get it done faster!
Q2: Will I get my shirt by [insert wintertime holiday here]?
The short answer: No. The longer answer: We want to get these shirts out of the door and into your hands as quickly as possible. We’re busting our asses and working long hours, and we’re even getting an extra pair of hands in the shop whenever we find someone generous enough to work in exchange for booze/baked goods/free food. But, all of that said, some people will get their shirts in time for their respective holidays, and some simply will not. It’ll be best if you assume that you will not, so you won’t be disappointed. And who knows, you may be pleasantly surprised!
Q3: WTF is taking so long? >.<
We hope you have a better idea of the current small-business-working-conditions we’ve got going on over here, but there is another reason that your order might not make it to you in a timely fashion: If you ordered your shirt via Etsy or directly through PayPal and did not specify what size(s) you wanted, we will need to take time to contact you or search through our email for the email you sent us with your size. We can’t send you your shirt if we don’t know what size you want, so this will delay your order.
Q4: I requested a women’s size/an unusual size/a different design placement/a different shirt and ink color. Is that gonna happen, by chance?
Regarding sizes: We’re really sorry, but we stated in the Reddit thread that we could only offer Unisex Small, Medium, Large, XL, 2XL and 3XL heather gray shirts, and we unfortunately will not be able to send any other type of shirts until after the holidays when we’re able to catch our breath. If you ordered a woman’s size shirt, we will send you a unisex shirt one size smaller, and if you ordered anything larger than our largest size, you will receive a 3XL. The reason behind this decision is that women’s shirts and plus-size shirts are considerably more expensive than unisex shirts; we’ve also already ordered our ink and shirt blanks, so we cannot accomodate any color change requests.
If you had your heart set on different colors, styles or sizes, check back with us after the holidays! We have plans to put this design on all of our current styles of shirt, and in a variety of colors. We’ll also be in a better place to accept custom orders by then, too 
Regarding design placement: Roughly half of you specifically requested that the design be placed higher on the shirt, so all of the shirts we’re sending out will have the design printed on the chest area, rather than the waist. We think it looks better up there, anyway.
We’re really, really, really sorry for any inconveniences.
And there will be a few, believe us. Rest assured, we’re putting forth our most kickass effort over here, but there will inevitably be some mistakes made along the way, what with all these late night t-shirt printing parties that may or may not involve drinking games to increase productivity. If we botch anything, shoot us an email at lovesickrobot@gmail.com — we’re ready and willing to work with you to make it right!
Also, if you don’t receive your shirt by January 1st, 2012, get a hold of us at lovesickrobot@gmail.com. Everything should at least be on its way by that point, and we want to make sure you get what you paid for (and then some)!
Your patience is immensely appreciated! <3
And we mean that in the most awkwardly romantic way possible. Our small business has grown into something less-small because of you! We appreciate anyone who helps us pay our mortgage and buy cat food, and you definitely fall into those esteemed ranks, fellow Redditors
It turns out that PayPal has decided not to import your addresses from Etsy or Storenvy, so I’ve been manually entering your addresses into their Multi-order Shipping dealy to get them priced out. My fingers are blistering from the super-sonic typing I’ve been doing but IT’S OKAY I HAVE BOOZE SO I CAN’T FEEL IT \o/
Sweet merciless Krampus. I don’t even know how many orders that is. All I know is that we’ve sent out roughly 400 packages and this is what we have left to process. All of this in addition to our normal holiday orders, which were up by about 50% this year. Also, that pile of paper is nap time central for our fatass kitties, which is GREAT.
We’ve been getting a lot of emails from you guys regarding the whereabouts of your shirts. Please keep in mind that we are only two people (we can sometimes con two others into helping us when they don’t have school or prior commitments) and we are printing each of these shirts by hand, one at a time, in our little 150 square foot home studio. So far we figure we can print, bag, tag and price out roughly 200 packages a day before burning styrofoam to keep warm and eating gravel for energy starts to sound like a good idea.
Back to work!
THE HOME STRETCH
We pwnt the hell outta your packages this weekend! With the exception of a finding a small handful of MIA customers and waiting for an over-night’ed order of shirts, nearly all of your packages will be in the mail and on their way to you today (it’s currently 3:30am CST as I write this)! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank NPR radio — your droning, monotone background noise made the hours fly by. I’d also like to thank Alcohol for giving me the strength to carry on, and helping me keep it down to 1-2 panicked fits of weeping per day.
Anyway, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone! <3
Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 3 Comments
November 22, 2011 by jackie
If you’re coming here from Reddit or Etsy or Storenvy, the long and the short of this blog post is to say: Thank you.
There’s quite a bit more to say than that, so I’ll elaborate in a minute. First, I need to recap the last 12 hours for those of you who don’t know what’s going on yet. Here’s the short version:
So, Brent was on Reddit and saw this awesome thing, inspired by this meme, and decided to make this. He posted that on Reddit, and quite a few people said they wanted to give us money for them. We originally had a listing up on Etsy, but the volume of orders has prompted us to move the listing over to our Storenvy Store. Now, 12 hours later, we have 800+ of those to make, and those numbers keep on rising. This is both terrifying and awesome for us, and we can’t thank our fellow Redditites enough for the massive display of support.
So, once again: Holy balls, thank you!
To give you an idea of the scale of the task before us: Lovesick Robot Studios is owned and operated by two people, one of whom has a full-time day job, and the other of whom has made the mistake of starting Skyrim right at the beginning of the holiday season (totally worth it). Two rooms of our house are entirely dedicated to our business, while the rest of the house is only partially inundated with business-related what-nots, and our current screen printing set-up – affectionately referred to as the “Ghetto Rig” — is very much improvised and home-made.
150 square feet of RAW SCREEN PRINTING POWER
We’ve been doing this without the most vital piece of screen printing equipment — the screen printing press itself — and we’ve still managed to make some pretty kickass shirts in the last year that we’ve been in business. We’ve put a lot of hard work into figuring this whole screen printing thing out without formal training or buying pre-made equipment, and it’s been a pretty sweet ride so far. With this new workload, however, we’re gonna need to break down and actually buy a for-real press so we can get these shirts out in a timely fashion. We’ve been doing research on the subject for roughly two years now, and we’ve been trying to save up for a time when we could comfortably purchase a four-color press while also buying groceries and paying for electricity in the arctic tundra that is Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’ll glance over the technicalities, because there are a lot of nuances to consider on that front, but we’ve narrowed down our options down to a nice, cheap, manual tabletop press that will let us print more than three or four shirts at a time before we need to clean our screens out to prevent damage. This will help us with this current workload by letting us finish more shirts in a shorter period of time, and we will no longer be limited by our equipment when coming up with new ideas for future designs — our small, homemade business will become slightly less small, thanks to you awesome people!
While we’re getting ready to have the most awesome shirt-printing party this household has ever seen, we’re also coming up with ways to give back to those who have helped us get to this point in such a short amount of time. We’ll be buying a sponsored link over on Reddit to do our part to make sure the awesomeness continues over there, we’re looking for ways to support the Occupy Movement as a whole with a portion of the proceeds, and we’re trying to think of ways to give back to each individual person who has made this possible. We’re thinking something to the tune of gift certificates for our various small shops that give you % off totals, free shipping, and so on. We’ll keep you posted on that as we iron out the details.
What else is there to say? Except maybe “thank you” over and over and over again! This is an exciting thing that’s happening for our little business, and we sincerely appreciate everyone’s support, whether it’s monetary or through the hundreds of kind notes that we’ve been getting.
Thank you!
Imagine my surprise when I came across this when I went to check our mail today:
HOLY CRAP SHIRTS
That’s right, folks. Six boxes high, two across, and two deep into our porch. Plus that baggy-thing there. To be fair, this isn’t quite all of the shirts; this is only 800 or so. So, half of your shirts are here. We’re going to owe our UPS guy a six pack when we’re done.
Now we just need to wait for that awesome little manual press (that we got ON SALE, I’m proud to add) that we ordered to get here. Stay tuned!
Category Uncategorized | Tags: brent bublitz,jackie steffen,lovesick robot studios,pepper spray cop,reddit,t-shirt | 7 Comments
November 18, 2011 by photozz
The narwhal, Monodon monoceros, is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. One of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale, the narwhal males are distinguished by a characteristic long, straight, helical tusk extending from their upper left jaw.
And despite what some friends *coughPietroCough* think, they are completely real. Coming soon to a shirt near you.
Category blog | Tags: christmas,fantasy,gift,Narwhal,shirt,whale | No Comments
November 7, 2011 by photozz
Christmas 2011 is almost here and what better time to stock up on geeky nerd stuff. Since last we talked we have expanded the empire slightly. We now have three Etsy stores open, as well as an Amazon shop, Storenvy shop and you can find our products in several physical storefronts.
http://lovesickrobot.storenvy.com/
Category blog | Tags: | No Comments
June 23, 2011 by jackie
This has been an especially busy week, and we’re scrabling to get a couple of large orders out of the door in a timely fashion, so I haven’t had the time to craft a super awesome/informative/interesting post. Instead, I decided to depict the cast and crew of Lovesick Robot as My Little Ponies during my break today.
From the top left we have Jackie, Brent, Keith, Pietro, Topher, Angelo, Jeremy, Heidi and Tara. You can have your own pony fun with this awesome pony-maker thing over on DeviantArt.
Category blog, geekery, jackie steffen, Uncategorized | Tags: brent bublitz,deviant art,flash,friendship is magic,game,Jeremy Lowther,love,Lovesick robot,my little ponies,ponies,time waster,topher macdonald | 1 Comment
June 20, 2011 by jackie
Mr. Bukkit is a most dapper walrus that I have fashioned out of clay (sculpey, to be exact). He’s my first “srs bsns” try at creating sculpture of any kind, so I have to say that I’m quite proud of how things are going so far. Knock on wood.
Here’s Mr. Buckit in raw sculpey form before being hardened in the oven:
He was a great deal lumpier in his pre-fired state, but a lot of TLC with some sand paper, steel wool and wood filler smoothed him right up!
Five coats of latex molding stuff later…
Someone must *really* like sculpting! (for all my fellow Regretsy fans out there)
~20 more coats of latex molding, and we should be well on our way to having a bona-fide walrus cloning facility on our hands!
Category blog, jackie steffen, sculpture | Tags: bucket,latex,lolcats,lolwalrus,molding,moldmaking,process,sculpey,sculpture,walrus | No Comments
June 17, 2011 by jackie
Category anti-rape, cthulu, cupcakes, illustration, kittens, ostritch, puppies, sketch, sketches, syndicated | Tags: Art,random bulsh,syndicated | Comments Off
