Girl, You Better Work!

Make a tie dye. Seems simple enough, right? Have you ever looked at a tie dye garment and thought "man, I love that but why so expensive?" Well, let me shine some light on the process that tie dye artists, and many other artists, go through to bring beautiful items to you. Let's talk space. My goodness the amount of space it takes up to store completed inventory, blanks, chemicals, safety gear, buckets, racks, and other crafting tools is truly unbelievable. Sorting through said objects, retrieving and putting them away, washing and reusing them requires a lot of physical labor. And we didn't just acquire said objects free of charge. It took years of small investments to get to a level of productivity. Making art is rarely a cheap endeavor. While we are on the subject of money, let's talk about water usage, electricity usage, and product loss (let's face it, not every project turns out and accidents happen.) These costs add up quickly as we complete our tasks.

Getting paid for our time and the labor involved is tricky. If we were truly paid what we are worth in terms of hours of labor involved, few people would be able to afford the items that we sell. Between the hours shopping for necessary items, prewashing, brainstorming, tying designs, applying dye to the garments, different forms of batch processing, hand-washing each individual item (sometimes repeatedly) to remove excess dye, basic laundering, photographing, networking/sales/marketing, packaging, shipping, delivering, graphic design (logo design as well as T-shirt graphics), answering emails, pricing items, uploading listings, updating inventory, and working the occasional arts/craft show or other in-person vending event... trust me, it's a lot. When you take into consideration that one basic tie dye takes between 2 and 3 days to complete, asking $30.00 - $80.00 for an item seems a little more reasonable. Also, please remember that each garment is created independently (not mass produced) so each one is a unique, one-of-a-kind work of art. No one else will have your same shirt! That's valuable in and of itself. Bottom line, we work our butts off to create beautiful items for you! We love every minute of it but loving what we do doesn't disqualify the fact that it is physically taxing on our bodies, challenging on our minds, and worth every penny you spend to support us. We truly appreciate those of you who understand the dedication we have to our craft and how hard we work behind the scenes. Of course, the true reward is putting smiles on your faces. If only those smiles could pay our bills ;)