Whenever I travel I pretty much always take a bottle or two with me and that has proven to be a tradition I should stick to. When I visited Paris, Sophie got a couple of bottles of Salmiakkikoskenkorva. Now that I've been visiting Berlin Maïa got some Vana Tallinn and on my last visit Guillaume got a bottle of Marskin Ryyppy. The laFraise team certainly doesn't spit on you if you offer any of us a drink. Some prefer beer, some wine and a occasional shot of vodka is nice too.
The weekend is soon here and since that's when most alcohol is consumed I thought it would be cool to have a game about that. Let's make it simple. If laFraise was a drink, what would go in it? Some rules though; the drink you're building can't contain more than 8cl of alcohol (which is actually quite a bit – Long Island Ice Tea only has 7,5cl), at least 4 ingredients should be used and the maximum size of a glass to be used is 50cl. This doesn't mean that you couldn't write recipes for smaller drinks or simple cocktails - they're appreciated just as well.
You've got only two hours to complete this task – your entry should be in before 6pm Helsinki time (GMT +2). I will notify the froggies and krauts (no offence intended, I'm just messing with you) too, so beware of the competition!
The winner gets enough brouzoufs for a t-shirt from our selection (shipping included). Brouzoufs will be transferred immediately after the game. Have fun! I know I will because when I've posted this I'll go make myself a drink.
Coolness never ends. Well, it may somewhere else but not here on laFraise. I just told you how much I personally enjoyed our latest new shirt and there's already a new one in the store; "Big Fish" is here! If you're a tattoo fan you can probably appreciate the japanese koi styled fish in this design. That alone would've done the trick for me but Cib didn't want to stop there and added a little twist to the illustration – the tiny fisherman. With the koi only the design would get ”****” and ”<3” from me but the fisherman adds one more star, a ”:D” and a ”^_^”.
"Big Fish" in our store
Violent flu is a bitch. I've been terribly sick over the last few days and yesterday I just couldn't do jack. Therefore a few announcements and other issues have been delayed a bit – sorry about that.
Anyway, we've got a new shirt in our store. Pagan truly is making perfect examples of ”less is more” with the way he's using colors. Interesting illustrations don't have to have loads of colors in them and ”Atlantis” shows this in a really nice way. I haven't bought a laFraise shirt myself in a while (mainly because I have way too many already) but this one I really have to get.
"Atlantis" in our store
"Atlantis" (longsleeve) in our store
At the moment we're working on some new special competitions for the EU site. In the meantime, check out the French laFraise for a ”BORN TO BE GEEK”-special. We're doing this in cooperation with lesjeudis.com – a best way to find an IT job in France. In case you speak 1337 better than any other language and know all possible ”All Your Base”-jokes you should definitely check out their site. They might have an open spot!
There's not that much to say about the theme itself since it's quite clear. Do whatever you want as long as it's as geek as possible. The deadline for submissions is 03.03, one winning design will be selected and printed on 500 t-shirts. 400 of these shirts will be sold right here on laFraise and 100 will be given to lesjeudis.com. Instead of the normal 1000 euros we're offering for the winner the winner of this competition gets 1500 euros.
PS. You can now get two Valentine's shirts for the prize of one. Just add two items to the basket and the price will be automatically reduced. ;)
To keep the balls rolling here's a second blog entry about new shirts in a row; ”Petanque Ball” has arrived in two version. The regular t-shirts are ”aqua” and the longsleeves are black for those of you that don't see digging your eyes out in the name of a game as a very luminous thing. Mr. Pandaluna (I think he's the only one of our designer that I'm addressing as ”Mr.” but he really deserves it. Just as soon as he's making one of his wicked killer robots for us I'll start calling him a ”Sir.”) is responsible of this utter madness – thank you!
"Petanque Ball" in our store
"Petanque Ball" (longsleeve) in our store
A new shirt that will most likely be appealing for all of you retro gamers out there is now available in our store. “Game shirt” features a very familiar looking fantasy landscape and seems like only the 8bit pixel mush is missing. So, the concept itself is very retro but the design is very 2008. Big up to Pagan for the design!
If you are wondering about the way the shirt is presented by our model you should check the French blog each Wednesday. The French community is having loads of fun sending in half naked photos of themselves with laFraise shirts and Maïa is publishing those every week.
"Game shirt" in our store
There not much to write about this thing but I thought you might want to know what I was doing for the most of the day yesterday. Proteus, “the king of hard dance and the prince of fetish” is publishing a new album in a while and I spent 7 hours shooting promo photos with him. Some 600 frames later we decided to call it a day and went home. The images you see below are just black and white previews – I haven’t had time to edit any of them yet.
The last photo is here just to show you we had loads of fun doing this too. Proteus is a friend of mine and I’m honoured that he still wants me to shoot his promos even now that he’s a world class DJ and a producer. After all, I know he could get many other photographers to shoot him even free of charge and those guys would probably be better than I’m too.
Today we’re shooting some more in the afternoon. Hopefully we’ll have the cover for the album before the Finnish darkness falls over us.
People have all kinds of bizarre (yet very fun) hobbies. When I was a kid Legos were pretty much the best thing I knew. I could’ve just kept on going playing with them endlessly and built huge things out of them. Starship Enterprise (on a pretty large scale too) is something I can clearly recall having built and with my personality it was surely destroyed soon after it was finished. I also won a Lego building competition on our trip to Sweden when I was 10 or so. For a kid that was highlight of the whole trip.
Some guys are taking building Legos far further than that though. Well, I’ve seen all kinds of massive structures built out them but that’s not too impressive really. Any obsessed maniac could do given enough time and a few truckloads of blocks. This time a fully functional Lego slot machine has been though and it’s pretty darn cool.
Seeing that thing makes me want to turn my parents garage upside down. With any luck they might still have my Legos. If you don’t hear anything about me in a few weeks you’ll know what I’m doing and where I’m at. After the first week I’d appreciate if you sent in a couple of pizzas and a sixpack. ;)
If you want to be the coolest kid on your block you've got to get yourself one of these.
We recently changed the way the products are presented in our store – like I mentioned earlier on. Since we really want your feedback I’m blogging about it again. We know you’re an active bunch of people and I’m sure you’ve got an opinion on this matter. Please share it with us.
Did you like the old style better or does the new one simply kick behinds so violently that just the sound of that carries to the moon and back? Are both “just fine” or should we develop a third way because both of them suck?
I talked about this over a cigarette with Guillaume before I left to the airport and even the two of us didn’t share the same view. So, your thoughts about this are quite valuable for the team, really. Thanks in advance for giving us a minute of your time. :)
Many of our designer seem to be fascinated by cats – designs with cats on them get printed all the time these days. I can understand that though since two of these mysterious creatures have been a huge part of my life for the past decade. Sometimes making mittens or furry hats out of them seems like the proper course of action but most of the time they’re a funny couple that offers me new things to see every day and gives me company whenever I really need it.
The cat on our new Mademoiselle-shirt “Madame la Marquise” is a fancy. Not too fancy to do the task cats were originally kept for though. First hand experience on that issue tells me some felines are just way too urban to actually kill anything anymore. This is the second time Nancy gets her stuff printed on Mad products – congratulations!
"Madame la Marquise" in our store
