studio peeks

Just a couple new adventures in new studio land:

Ain't a party unless you get you some bunting! I made this super bunting out of scraps left over from making colorful pillows. 

And no party is complete without a proper hand painted toilet sign above the lavatory. 

Come see it all this Saturday at our Studio Warming Party

signs of a studio

This past weekend we made a big huge sign to go outside our studio. This way you can find us, and we'll always know where we parked our studio! 

Dylan cut out our sign out of a huge chunk of wood, then painted it white. Because of it's shield like shape, when we went to draw on the lettering, it wouldn't stand up straight, so we flipped it upside down so it wouldn't fall over while we outlined our letters. The overhead projector made it super easy to make sure we didn't goof up our own logo  - becuase that would have been mighty embarrassing.

 Once the logo was traced we got to painting!! This was the fun part, like a childhood coloring book...but no mermaids or dragons, just letters. 

and it took forevers. (insert break)

 After many touch ups, and cleaning up the image, our sign was complete. Now we just have to hang it! yay!

Come see our sign and everything else our studio has to offer at our Studio Warming Party this Saturday. Hit this link for more info. See you there!!

doodle break

This is how cat hair gets in your coffee. Ever happen to you?

Studio Play Time - Pile of Frames

This weekend, we raided our local Goodwill to find a pile of decent looking frames for a fun wall project in the Dowdy Studio. It's a super easy way to fancy up a wall on a budget.

Here's what we did:
First - Raided Goodwill's frame section for cheap used frames. It's good to go with two people on this one. I almost lost a few frames when I had my collection laying on the floor in a pile. I reached over to grab another frame that caught my eye, and some lady was inching towards my frame hoard ready to snatch up the good ones. But I and my ninja fast like moves prevented her from her thefty plan. So our advice is to take another body with you to guard your frame collection while you hunt for more, or get really really good at being a ninja.

Second - Take your frame hoard home to free the 80s or 90s artwork from it's clutches. You may need some scissors or a pair of pliers to open the backs of some frames. If the artwork is exceptionally awesome, keep it!! We decided that this home over grown with flowers sitting in a meadow was a perfect keep. We're actually turning it into another project that we'll show ya laters.

Thirdly - We wanted to preserve the gold interior of the frames, so we taped them off before painting. Some of our frames didn't have a golden interior, but they were already metallic, so we just taped off a portion of it, so we wouldn't paint over it.

Forther - We painted them!! Then we waited for them to dry. I think we went to go get lunch at Good 2 Go, then came back to the studio.

Fifthy - Some frames, we kept the original backing, and wrapped fabric around it. Dylan scored this menswear fabric from a thrift shop for $1.50. DEAL!

Fifthy half - You can make the back pretty with a hot glue gun or super glue or staples, but we didn't have any of that. We did have lots and lots of painter's tape after painting the studio....so...painter's tape it was!! We don't recommend using painter's tape, as it does not stick very well to fabric, but if you put enough on, it will hold it enough. We plan on redoing this part in the future.

Six-ish - We laid out the frames on the floor and arranged them to our likings.

Seventh - Then we hung them on the wall. DONE!! We'll soon get them all ready to hold our jewelry pieces, but we didn't have any supplies for that, and we were tired after all the other work we had done yesterday.  So to the couch we went!!

Come see our projects in person at our New Studio Party on Feb 4th. Click here for deets!!

Cheers!!
-Pamela + Dylan

Party with us!!

We gotta new studio, and we're ready to party with ya!!

Join us Saturday, February 4th from 6-9pm in our new studio

We're celebrating finally giving our studio the 1, 2, PUNCH out of our home, where we worked out of our red studio garage for the past 4 years, into a brand new snazzy studio space in east Dallas. We've been jazzing this place up since late December just for you, and it's look'n good. 

Now go get your party pants ready, and let's get this party started!!! Bring your bestest buddies and join us for Mer Jacks, fun, beer, a tee bar, snacks, more fun, the Wagon and more. We'll have our silk screen press working the never before seen Dowdy Studio Tee Bar, a from 7pm - 8pm-ish featuring our newest design, debuting at the party, where you can select your very own tee color, and watch Dylan or Pamela (the bar-tee-enders) screen print your tee before your very eyes. Drinks are on us, as we bust open a big fat keg for the 21 & up folks. We'll have some snackies out, and Goodburger is right around the corner serving burgers and yum for those who experience an extra super hungry. Our Mer-Jack photo cut out will be ready to party with you, and we'll have all the Dowdy Studio goodies, and the Wagon will be open inside for shopping fun.

Address: 10025 Garland Rd. Suite G  Dallas, TX 75218

Directions: Dowdy Studio is tucked behind Good 2 Go Taco and Goodfriend, on the north east corner of Garland Road and Peavy Road. Enter the Good 2 Go/Goodfriend lot, and pull around the right side of the building. Behind there you'll find a strip of warehouse spaces. Dowdy Studio in the building on the left, 2 doors down. There is another entrance on Garland Road between Sali's Italian Restrauant and the orange antique store, Second Chance Treasures. Dowdy Studio is to the left after the Sali's building. Parking is behind Second Chance Treasures.

Hit up our facebook event page to RSVP and share with your friends.

And here's a sneak peeeeeek:

The Mer-Jack would like to say something...

but we're not gonna let him, just yet......

New Studio Adventures - Hung & Done

Creating a studio space invites lots of fun projects to start happening. One thing that was on our project wish list was to hang a giant sign somewhere in the new creative workspace. Many ideas rattled around in our heads before we finally decided to go with a recycled shipping palette. Luckily our local home improvement shop was looking to toss a few unloved ones, and we were happy to take them off their hands. 

Palettes are usually made out of scrap wood, and are easily dinged up and broken while they're doing their heavy lifting at their day jobs. The retired overworked pile of palettes we were given had many broken and missing boards, so before we even got started, we had to pull a few split and broken planks of wood off this piece and replace them with more desirable slats from another palette. We then sanded down the whole thing to protect our hands from getting splinters. After all that, it was fun artsy time!!

We printed a transparency sheet of our logo and slapped it on a projector that Dylan was given by his high school art teacher. This enabled us to outline the letters in pencil on the palette wood.

After tracing the letters, we busted out some paint and got to painting in the lettering. Once we finished painting the D in Studio, we had to stop and giggle, then bust out the camera and shoot the Dowdy Stud. hehe We imagined him being a tattooed bearded muscle man who tames lions in his free time and only eats raw steaks. He lives on a mountain and rides wild bulls to and from the local market, where he tells the town children stories about his youthful adventures. Yup.....we make things up.....a lot.

Dylan then screwed in some metal hooks directly into the wood, so we could loop some heavy duty chain through.

The ceilings in the studio are pretty high, and we are both terribly afraid of heights, so this part took the longest. It involved a ladder, lassoing a chain, freaking out, climbing down the ladder, cursing, contemplating just leaning the sign on the floor, climbing back up the ladder, and finally eating our fear and getting this bishhh hung from the rafters. Phew....makes me nervous just writing about it.

We're happy to have our sign hung and done. We also can't wait for you to come see it at our Studio warming party. We'll post details about it shortly, so stay tuned!! PARTY PARTY PARTY!!!

Cheers,
-Dylan + Pamela

New Studio Adventures

Most people spent their holiday break playing with their new Christmas toys, or hanging out with family or eating lots of sweets and left overs. Well we did that same exact thing, except instead of toys, we had a new studio to remodel, and we brought in family to help make it happen. Oh....we also had lots of coffee, energy drinks, and loud music to keep us going (duh).

 

One of the big projects in renovating the new studio was building a printing room in the back part of the studio. This is where Dylan will be screen printing all our tees, clocks, coasters and more. We enlisted the help of Dylan's dad Tad, aka Dad Dowdy, to put up some fancy walls. Dylan's dad is a master wood worker and awesome at building things. His history includes set building for movie sets, custom interior work, train model building, and furniture. So it was a no brainer to ask this jack-of-all-trades to help us with this studio undertaking. 

Dylan was put to work on helping his dad build the wall, while I (Pamela) remodeled the bathroom. I declared myself Manager Extreme of Bathroom Design, and worked away in the tiny space making it beautiful awesome!

Building a room isn't as easy and fast as you may think. After building the structure, then framing it out,  you then have to put up dry wall, and cover the seams with fancy wall mud, then wait for it to dry.........and wait......and once it dries, you can put on another layer of mud seam filler......and wait....some......more. While waiting a few days for the walls to dry, we had time to paint a giant gray stripe down the wall, paint the floors, and build a few more projects that we'll share with you soon.

We had the best holiday break we could ask for!! It's always fun working with your best friend in the whole wide world on a huge project.

Support the Dowdy fam!! Check out some of Dad Dowdy's homemade furniture line here.


Cheers!!
-Pamela + Dylan

Kicking out the Studio

Sorry we've been so quiet here lately. If you follow us on the facebook or the twitter, you might have heard us jumping up and down and screaming about us finally moving Dowdy Studio into a real studio!! YEAH!!! So no more working out of our red home studio garage and spare bedroom, no more tracking inky blobs throughout the house, and no more running back and forth from the house to the garage to print tees and make things happen.

Right now, our tee storage and jewelry making room are in our spare bedroom, our printing station and drawing area are in our studio garage, and the Wagon hangs out on our back patio. Meaning if we're printing a truckload of tees, and forget to grab a small tee off the shelf....we've got to run all the way through the house to the spare room to grab it, then back. It makes for a wonderful cardio workout, but not so great for running an art studio. If you're familiar with any artists, you might be aware of this already, but we have short attention spans and can easily get distracted. Kittens!! <---see? So going from the garage to the spare bedroom to the patio can sometimes be a longer distraction that you'd think.

We're excited to kick out the studio from our home, and relieve ourselves of the cardio triangle that is our lives now, and move everything to our new space in Dallas, where everything can live in one big space.

Below are some shots of what we're working with now, we'll be sure to update soon with photos of the new space and the fun projects we're working on.

  (photo by Dowdy Studio)

The Dowdy Studio Wagon hanging out on the back patio.  See our patio set sadly watching the Wagon take it's spot in the background?

 (photo by Sara Kerens for the Dallas Observer Mix Master)

Pamela's sewing and jewelry making table in our supply closet of a spare bedroom. 

  (photo by Sara Kerens for the Dallas Observer Mix Master)

Tee screens hanging on the wall of our red studio garage. 

 (photo by Sara Kerens for the Dallas Observer Mix Master)

Dylan printing tees in the drafty studio we built into our red detached garage.