How to Secure Your Booth...

Setting up at a street festival can be one of the most direct, and fun, ways to put your products in front of a new audience. The dense crowds of happy-go-lucky festival goers have made this approach the backbone of our micro-business. Effectively conducting business at one of these festivals, is, however, a highly nuanced matter, which is to say, there are about a billion different aspects to keep in mind. Today's focus, securing your tent.

A solid tent provides shade from the sun, relief from the rain, a barrier to the wind, and a more professional display for your work. That being said, not all tents are created equal. E-Z Up, while making a variety of tents, is the most common and one of the least expensive tents on the market. But they're cheap for a reason. I've seen more bent poles, collapsed canopies, torn corners, and leaky messes with an E-Z Up logo on them than any other brand. Light Dome offers a much higher quality, and much pricier, tent, that has kept us covered for years now.

Regardless of the tent you go with, it's essential that you tie it down. With the canopy stretched over the top, the tent effectively becomes a giant sail, and you'd be shocked how little wind it takes to lift those suckers into the air. Over the years, I've seen all sorts of strategies for tying down a tent, but  two approaches seem the most popular: weights on rope or lots of heavy merchandise. Large sand filled weights, like these (above) are a popular option, but old dumbbells work too! (below)

Like I said, weighing down the tent is 100% necessary, but procuring extra weights is not always necessary. Our display, for instance, is held solidly in place by it's own weight. If you look closely you'll notice that all our hangers, shelves, hats and shirts are all attached to 3x8 foot metal grid panels. Each panel weighs 6 lbs, so with 16 or so, plus all the merchandise, we have more than enough weight to keep things secure.

For most, however, the additional weights are indispensable. Jewelers, potters, painters, musicians, all should be sure the weights are securely attached to the tent itself. I've seen people who simply rest weights on the base of their tent, THIS WILL NOT WORK! Once that tent starts to sway back and forth, they loose their effectiveness. TIES ARE KEY, as you can see from the images above. So be safe, be secure, and good luck!

Celebrate Your Independence

Wow, what a 4th! It's practically our favorite holiday here at Fish Face, so we made sure to take some time off to enjoy the weekend. BBQ on the grill, beers in the kiddy pool, motorcycle rides through the country-side, bags in the backyard, the smell of fresh cut grass, guitars by the bon-fire; this weekend had it all!

The point is, we take our independence seriously over here, and we sincerely hope you got a chance to enjoy yours. As a mico-business, The freedom we have to steer the ship is one of the defining features of being a micro-business (at least in our minds). But it's not the kind of freedom where you can just run around doing whatever you feel like, we're still responsible to our customers after all. What we do have is the kind of independence that comes from putting yourself, your whole self, in your work each and every day. And at Fish Face, that's what independence means to us, it means being free to be yourself, to be a little quirky, a little different. It means being a "gone thinking" kinda guy on one day, and a "just add beer" dude the next.

So we say take your independence, and run with it, whichever direction you wanna go!

Grilling with Planks!

We believe exploring, experimenting and life long learning are not only vital to operating a successful micro-business, they're also what keeps life fun and interesting! As a result, when it comes to summer BBQing, we're always trying to change it up with new recipes and techniques. 

For those serious culinary explorers out there, a grilling plank is indispensable! The process of preparing salmon on a cedar plank dates back to Native American's in the Pacific Northwest but alder, hickory, and maple are also great plank options. Plank grilling is a great way to really accentuate that great smokey flavor and aroma that defines the grilling experience. Here's a few tips:

1. Soak the plank for about an hour before hand! This prevents the plank from lighting on fire...
2. Keep the grill closed! This helps keep the temperature high and even.
3. Don't flip it! There's just no need...
4. Try something different! It's a great way to grill veggies without having them fall through...

Fish Face or Duck Face?

Last summer, everywhere you turned (at least online) someone was making one of those d%mn duck faces. You know what I'm talking about, lips pushed together and protruding like a flattened kissy face or a mallard's bill. 

Fueled by a slew of lady celebrities, the silly facial accessory became a staple in photo shoots across the country. From Mylie Cyrus to your cousin, the duck face was more popular for the ladies than baseball caps are for dudes. In fact, several documentary musicals were even produced to capture the trend.

As a micro-business, we're always trying to stay on top of the latest trends, which has us thinking; what's gonna be this summer's big facial accessory? 

We're putting our money on the fish face to supersede the duck face as this summer's hot new trend. Fashion is cyclical, and it's about time the fish face came back around. Plus, it's way more versatile than the duck face. For those of you looking for a jump on the summer's newest trend, we'd like to showcase a few styles you may like to try out. 

For those of you looking to make a bold statement, the sturgeon face is a serious counter to the silliness of the duck face. 

And then there's always the classic, slimming, cheek-sucking variety.

But the ultimate fish face has to be the two-handed lip grab. Sure, it's not easiest to do on the fly, but when you pull it off… i just can't imagine anyone making fun of this trend.

We Have Rain Barrels! (For Us, Not For You)

Here at Fish Face we love projects. We're always tinkering with things, exploring, and experimenting. We also run our shop on a well system in a semi-rural section of Northern Illinois. As anyone who has lived on a well can tell you, it definitely instills an ethics of conservation, cause when you're out of water, it's like being up a creek without a … without water. 

Not only do we need to be conscious of our water usage because of the well, we also believe it's important to save some water for the fishes! 

To do so, we've added these nifty new rain barrels the shop. It works exactly the same way your traditional gutter system works, except instead of pouring into a pile of mud at the corner of your building, the gutters drain into these barrels. You're probably not going to want to drink from these barrels, but since only 1% of the water we use goes to drinking, there are plenty of other great uses for this so called "gray water". We use the water to clean off our screens after printing a design, to wash down the tent after a muddy festival, to keep our bushes growing in the summer heat, and to fill our water guns (another component of our top-notch security system). 

What do you do to save water? Surely there are more ways out there, and we're always looking for new techniques, please share!