Dowdy Studio: March 2011

Mar 29, 2011

Join the Wagon at Bolsa Cafe on Saturday April 2nd

We are excited for our very first solo show in the parking lot of Bolsa Cafe in Oak Cliff. Bolsa not only has tasty tasty eats and yummy drinks, but a large outdoor patio that will be ready for a your weekend relaxing. We'll be rolling up in the Dowdy Studio Wagon at 3pm and hanging out with you until 8pm or until they kick us out. We'll be toting our screen printed tees, messenger bags, our handmade wooden jewelry, art prints and more. Come with friends or bring a date for some intimate shopping in the smallest handmade shop and enjoy Bolsa's great atmosphere and food.

The forecast is predicting a sunny day in the 80s with a comfy night in the mid-60s. Oh heck yeah!!! Perfect! So please join us and get your eat and wine on too! Yum!

Bolsa Cafe

Date: Saturday, April 2nd
Time: 3-8pm
Location: Bolsa Cafe's parking lot
614 West Davis Dr Dallas, TX
Cost: FREE!!!

A little about Bolsa Cafe: Bolsa was named D Magazine's Restaurant of the Year in 2009 and Dallas Observer's 'Best Place To Take A Date' and 'Best Patio'. So we are a little excited to be teaming up with them to showcase the Dowdy Studio Wagon. One of the coolest things about Bolsa is that they use all organic and natural-raised ingredients in their dishes and source ingredients from local growers, ranchers and fishermen throughout Texas whenever possible. We are looking to our favorite, their flat breads, but will probably do some menu exploring while we're there. Drool over their menu for yourself here.

Can't join us at Bolsa? Check out our events calendar. We'd love for you to come!

See you soon!

-Pamela + Dylan

Mar 28, 2011

When we have free boxes + free time:

Mar 24, 2011

Easy How to: Insta-Bunting!

Ok gang, this is super super easy and you just need a few items and about 15-20 minutes to make super duper sweet bunting.

We made this fun bunting to decorate the Dowdy Studio Wagon for it's big showing in Austin for SXSW. Now we're showing you! It's great for decorating for parties or for permanent home deco.

So if you wanna make some go get these supplies:

- Fabric Glue

- Quilt Binding (3 yrds = 9 ft)

- Pins

- Multi colored Fabric

- Fabric Scissors

Optional

- Chester the kitten/intern (not recommended)

Step 1 - Cut some triangles and strips. I freehand cut mine, but you can easily make your own templates out of a piece of paper or find one online to use. I decided to change up the standard triangle bunting by adding some ribbon shapes too. Yeah! We're getting fancy, shake it!

Step 2 - Now that you have all your pieces cut, begin placing them in the quilting tape. I started the bunting about 10 inches in so there would be some extra quilt binding on the ends to tie around the Wagon. Unroll the quilt binding and unfold the first fold to place the top of each fabric piece inside the top crease of the folded quilt binding. It's good to lay out about 4 pieces at a time. Anymore and it gets messy, and you'll be yelling at the bunting for being such a mean bully face and getting all crazy on you. Just a warning.

Step 3 - Glue party fancy time!! We used Liquid Stitch fabric glue. This stuff is great. It dries fast and holds strong. This is how we can get this bunting done in 15-20 min. Slide down one fabric piece and draw a line of glue across the back part of the quilt binding, place the fabric piece back in place over the glue line, then draw another glue line on top of the fabric piece and lay the top part of the quilt binding over it.

Step 4 - Press firmly on the quilt binding for about 3 seconds. This stuff dries pretty fast, so make sure you have the fabric piece in place exactly how you want it before you press down. Now get back up there to step 2 and repeat until you finish your bunting.

Step 5 - Done. Awesome!

Step 6 - Get Chester to check your handmade bunting for quality. He approved this one, which is good. When he doesn't like them he gets his claws in them and runs around the house with them.

Step 7 - Hang it! If you're decorating for a party and you're done early....uh, grab a pre-drinky to celebrate! You did great.

If you've made some homemade bunting, we'd like to see! Share with us in the comments section below what you made.

Cheers!
-Pamela _ Dylan

The Official Wagon Dances

Sorry we've been gone, We missed you!

We had a little sickies this week after returning from Austin. After a two day becoming one with the couch and sleep session, we are finally back to walking, talking and dancing!!! Here! We'd like to share:

We just couldn't resist making a couple more dance videos while at SXSW. Above is the forward fist walk with a locomotion rewind. Sounds fancy don't it?

Well if you were wildly impressed with the first dance let me introduce this little move we like to call the shakey shakey leg lift shimmy. It's so fun that even the tees decided to join in as back up dancers. Thanks tees!

Cheers!

-Pamela + Dylan

Mar 21, 2011

Back from SXSW...

And it was AWESOME!!! We always love road tripping to Austin with the Wagon and our tees, jewelry, bags and art prints. Seriously, we'll take any excuse we can get to go visit our artsy neighbors to the south. When SXSW rolls along, you know we'll be making that our big excuse to say so long to Dallas for the weekend and go have some fun.

If you've been following along here on the blog you'd be familiar that we set up shop at Auditorium Shores just south of downtown Austin on Lady Bird Lake. We were thrilled to see the Strokes play on Thursday night, followed by more tunes on Friday, then some Man Man and Felice Brothers and more on Saturday!!! Much fun party extreme!

We rolled on in before all the action on Thursday and set up the Dowdy Studio Wagon. We made the bunting the week before to go around the awning and door frame, and we'll show you how to make your own later this week. So stay tuned here on the blog.

Our chalkboard sign was a great way to welcome everyone to the Wagon. We decided giving a big Dowdy "Howdy" would be the friendliest way to say hello. Plus, we're in Texas, so it's kinda mandatory that we give a warm Texas welcome.

This was a snapshot of early Saturday afternoon. The vibe was very family friendly, so people were lounging on blankets with their kiddos and families on the lawn. It was perfect weather and everyone was so super nice! We loved meeting so many awesome people.

We loved watching Man Man play!!! They put on a great high-energy show. If you ever get the chance, go see these guys, DO IT!. Tons of fun! Or watch it on NPR here.

At night as the Strokes played, it was so crowded (22,000+ people), we couldn't even get close enough to the stage to get a picture of them. So see that blue light there....see it? That's them.... somewhere in there.

See you soon Austin!!! We'll be back May 21-22 for Renegade Craft Fair!! Hooray!

Check out more pics of our weekend on our Facebook page. Click here.

Cheers,

-Pamela + Dylan

Mar 15, 2011

The Wagon goes to SXSW

Join us in Austin for South by Southwest for a huge free concert on Lady Bird Lake!

SXSW - FREE Concert series o Lady Bird Lake
Date: Mar 17-19
Time: (th) 6-10pm, (f) 6-10pm, (sa) 12-10pm
Location: Auditorium Shores
920 W. Riverside Drive Austin, TX
Cost: FREE!!!
more info (click here)

Hope to see you there! If you come by, here's some goodies you can expect to see. Can't make it to Austin? Well you can always find these tees in our Etsy shop.

Grand Whale

Foxy Fox

Double Vision

Rock Hand

Mar 14, 2011

The Grand Opening!

We were so lucky and grateful to be able to hold our big Dowdy Studio Wagon grand opening at the Gypsy Wagon off Henderson in Dallas! The staff was super super sweet and we could do nothing short of fall in love with them all!

We've began dubbing the Dowdy Studio Wagon "the unofficial smallest retail shop in Texas". We haven't done our research, but we think it might be true. With 72 sqft of shopping space inside, it's a tight squeeze, and I don't know of any other shops crazy enough to go that small.

Speaking of small, as a little bonus extra, we decided to go all out and buy a dozen balloons to festive up the Wagon for its big day. He was looking mighty handsome, but unfortunately his dashing dark looks, brought in the heat and kept popping the balloons. I think we kicked off the morning with 6 survivors. We were sad, but happy to have them.

What's cool about having 72 sq ft of space is that we had to think creatively about how to structure the space. One of the big perks is having a wagon with a huge window that opens up. This made it feel big and open, and if it ever got too crowded inside, you could still see all the lovely goods from the outside. It was really fun helping shoppers through the window. We joked that we might have to make Dowdy Studio paper hats and aprons, but we were also kinda serious.

Thank you all for your support in the opening of our small little Wagon! We hope to see you very soon at our upcoming events. You are all awesome!!

Much love,

-Dylan + Pamela

Click here to see where we'll be next

See more pics from the grand opening on facebook

Mar 13, 2011

DANCE!!!

Across the street from the Gypsy Wagon is this really great brick wall! It's beautiful and we just couldn't help but dance in front of it. Hit that beat!!!!

Guess what we're dancing to.

I bet you can't guess.

Mar 9, 2011

Getting Ready - Part Dos!

This is just a few shots form Dylan's day today. He was (and still is) in the studio printing tees, and bags for the Grand Opening this Saturday. So here's a quick peek at Dylan's tee making extravaganza.

Silkscreening is tough to master and even tougher to explain, so let's try shall we. First step, put a shirt on you tee board.

Second Step: Maneuver oxymoron future robot looking machine from the Middle Ages over shirt. This is where the magic happens....do 3 back flips, spin in counter clockwise circles, touch your toes, shout " and jump really high in the air. Now the key to getting this right is the last jump. If you don't jump really high, you'll anger the Middle Ages part of the machine and it'll turn into a trebuchet and fling ink at you. (maybe)