merchandise Archives - Sofia Talvik - Americana / Folk with Swedish Roots

Sometimes everyones tired and grumpy... — Sometimes everyone's tired and grumpy...

Lots of people think it’s just glamour, travels and good times to be an artist. Even friends of mine tell me how great it must be for me to “get to” tour and travel so much. Even they don’t realize I pay for the tour myself most of the time and bringing a band is never cheap, you guys out there who have families know a couple of plane tickets tend to eat up your budget pretty fast.

I also get a lot of questions from up-and-coming artists wondering how to go about the business of starting a record label or how to promote their music. I always try to answer the best I can, but the short answer to all of this is “you have to work your ass off!”. Nothing comes for free in this business and no one will care about your music as much as you do, no matter what that manager/label/pr company is trying to tell you.

So I was very happy to stumble upon this great website where all of the stuff about being an artist and building your brand is collected in a fun and comprehensible way. This post today is mainly for all you artists and musicians out there, but you other guys can check out http://www.eventric.com/ as well (scroll down to featured articles), it’s a lot of fun reading and gives you an insight on all the things you need to know when you want to get out there with your music.Martin Atkins who is the guy sharing all these great tips really knows what he’s talking about!

One of the things that made me laugh was the post about why you need to learn screen printing as an artist. Why? So you can make your own merchandise of course. Just like I started doing a while back. All my tees are hand printed by me, check them out here: shop.sofiatalvik.com. So it’s just a lot of great advice there for all artists, no matter where you are in your career.

Here’s some fast links to my fave posts:

11 (of 27) Things Touring Bands Can Do NOW To Make a Difference

11 MORE (of 29) Tips Touring Bands Can Do Now To Make a Difference

10 Ideas For Making Your Show an Event

Just remember that it's a lot of hard work!

I just printed a bunch of cool tees, tanks and totes for the new release. Making the whole thing from scratch allowed me to personally choose the models of the clothes to guarantee a nice fit. I think most band merch are pretty ugly because the models and quality of the tees the printers can offer are hideous. I’d never wear one of those thick ugly tees even if I liked the band. So I decided to actually print my merch tees myself. The tees are made of cotton and are very soft. I used the screen print method with a print I designed myself.

I decided on three different models for girls. A basic black tee with a pretty low-cut v-neck in an almost “burnt out” thin cotton, available in S but fits S-M. A grey tank top with a low-cut round neck in a slightly longer length, available in S and M. And finally a dark grey oversized tee with a wide neck that fits S-L. All girl tees comes with a light pink print.

For guys I decided on a basic cotton tee in turquoise with round neck, available in S-M, and a summery grey tank in organic cotton available in S-M. All guys tees comes with a black print.

You can also get a stylish black cotton tote with pink print in the shop.

Everyone who purchases apparel until the release, May 12th will get a free download of the “Florida” album B-side “My Bored Ol’ Heart”. Click here to go to the shop now!

Tag: merchandise

The hard work of being an artist!

New tees in the shop