Follow Friday!

So here's another Friday and time to get your follow on. Here in Pandora land we've been suffering the effects of a lull in the World Cup action but today it's back with a vengeance! Jamie is a little sickly but the football has cheered his heart and the promise of much laughs watching I Love You Phillip Morris when he gets home from work has given him something to live for. Hope you have something entertaining planned for your Friday evening. Without further ado here is the Follow Friday list for the first weekend in July!

@RizzoTees - Amusing tees of awesomeness that will have you splitting a gut in no time. Good friendly people too. Check out their website here and their facebook page here.

@Garyvee - Gary Vaynerchuk is a wine critic and hosts Wine Library TV, a podcast that reviews wine and gives advice on wine appreciation. However he is on the list today as he is also the author of "Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion" which promotes the idea of finding something that truly makes you happy and to monetize that passion on the internet. He maintains that in this technological age all one needs is passion, knowledge and effort to build a business. Check out his website here.

@TeeGazette - This site is a great place to publicize your tees. Each week a tee company is featured with information on that company and info on promos they are running. The site also frequently updates with information on promos other tee companys are running also, so this site is a great place for tee designers and consumers alike. Tee Gazette is here.

@GritFx - This tee company features designs with movie and tv references, pop culture inspired designs and stuff thats a little on the weird side. GritFX also encorporates movie reviews and music reviews in their online GritFX magazine. All in all a very interesting and unusual combination! Check them out here.

Hope you enjoy our recommendations! We certainly have. See you soon. Hoot Hoot!

Follow Friday

Since Pandora Apparel became involved with this online t-shirt extravaganza we have received a warm welcome from many solidly established t-shirt companies. For this we are very grateful and as such, wish to do what we can to say a very big thanks to them and everyone who has helped us thus far. To say thanks we plan to release a list of people who helped us, dig us and who we dig every friday in the form of a follow friday list! I know this is only a small thank you and we hope to do more to give back to the tee community as and when we can. So here I am taking a break between World Cup matches to give you our first list!

@ladyumbrellaltd - A ladies designer tee company run by the walking ball of charisma Rob Ryan and the lovely, talented Spanish designer Elena Montes Casado. These guys know how to create a great tee and are experts online. They recently opened a shop in Dublin which should definitely be on your list of places to visit. You can check out their tees here!

@saucewear - This tee company specialises in unique and custom order tees which are random and funny. Saucewear is run by Kelly Murphy, who is an expert on WWF (before it changed to WWE) and Saved by the Bell and their website is located here!

@naturecreations - Amanda Ryan is the operator of nature creations, known also as Creature Creations, a company which makes awesome personalised photo gifts. Amanda obviously has great taste as she nominated Jamie of Pandora Apparel as Fan of the Month on the Creature Creations facebook fanpage! Go visit the Creature Creations website here and don't forget to get your follow on.

@Teesinapod - A wonderful resource for anyone who wants to know about promoting their brand on social media and entertaining to boot. Well worth a follow methinks and check out their blog for further information!

@LeftySwag - If you like your tees with a political twist then LeftSwag is your one stop resource! Very friendly and witty to talk to also! Good times all round. Give them a follow and check out their facebook fanpage here. Their website is coming this summer.

So there you have it, our first attempt to give a little back to the community. Hope you like our recommendations and don't forget to vote for the tee design that Monika submitted to Threadless which you can find here. Hoot Hoot!

Wheels Within Wheels

There has been lots of ins and outs for Pandora Apparel recently. As of writing we stand at 359 fans on our Facebook fanpage, which we are very excited about and also very inspired by the support! We will announce the 2 winners of our super cool awesome give away on Friday after we draw the winning names from over 150 entrants and we hope the winners will enjoy their free gift! Our Twitter account is also coming along nicely with currently 140 followers. We at Pandora Apparel had never used Twitter before embarking on our adventure and so there has been growing pains involved in our usage of the medium. At first we didn't understand it, then we thought it was nonsense but now we've come to love it!

Our quest to find a supplier continues daily. This has proven quite a journey. First we needed to learn what kind of t shirts we wanted. Did we want them screen printed? Did we want our own tags? And just what is origination? But after visiting a number of websites and getting some quotes we settled into the jargon of the process and decided what we wanted in a t shirt printer. Namely, we want quality! The best quality we can afford so you can have a long lasting t shirt and one with a design that doesn't fade or crack after a few washes resulting from spilled pints and curries. In pursuit of this goal we investigated a number of suppliers and the ones that have stood out for us so far are Storenvy and Bar One. We're currently in discussions with both suppliers to see which one will give us the better deal!

We also looking into the possibility of getting bags made for our more discerning fans. The supplier for these bags is in Poland so Monika has been taking care of things on that end. They are organic and the designs Monika has concocted for them are pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Once we finalise the design of the bags we just might give you a sneak pick on our Facebook page. Pandora Apparel bags; perfect for putting all your Pandora Apparel tees in!

Remember to stay tuned to our Facebook page for more giveaways in the future and more t shirt designs! Hoot Hoot!

One Winner and a Give Away!

We only got one correct answer to our question so there's only one winner! Congratulations to Lais Thatiany Nepomuceno! Hope you'll enjoy your little plush Pandora and bookmark! Go to Pandora's fanpage to find out how YOU could get your hands on more free stuff or keep on reading below the picture!

Because we had only one winner in our last competition we still have two prizes to give away! Our goal is to reach 300 fans by next friday the 11th of June! Help us with this by getting your friends to become fans of the Pandora facebook page! Leave a comment to let us know you suggested the page to your friends. If we reach 300 fans by next friday we'll give away the two prizes!

From The Wise Owl's Tall Tales

Once upon a time, when the streets of New York were home to beatniks and Bob Dylan, the Concorde was nearly ready to fly and My Fair Lady won Best Picture at the Oscars, Pandora found herself with new freedom after escaping from the housewife that kept her in a cage. She was revelling in her liberty and swooping and soaring all around the city trying to find her way back to the forest. She had just glimpsed the tops of the trees in the distance when all of a sudden she heard the most interesting sound she had ever heard! She looked around her to find that she was in the middle of Greenwich Village and filled with curiosity she stopped her journey home and followed her ears.

After a short flight she found herself outside the window of the loft in a small, rundown apartment building. She peered inside and saw where the wonderful sound was coming from. A young man was sitting on a chair, playing guitar and creating the most astounding blues Pandora had ever heard (the wise owl knew what great blues was, as she had spent some time down by the bayou listening to blues legends like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920's and 1930's.)

The window was open so she flew silently inside and perched on a guitar stand. The young man didn't notice her until she hooted in appreciation of his music. He was very, very surprised when he saw an owl sitting in his loft and even more surprised when she spoke to him.

"The music you play is amazing but it would be even more astounding if you combined it with pop music" - said the owl staring at the young guitarist with her big yellow eyes.

The man was absolutely dumbstruck and couldn't manage to say one word. Before he had a chance to recover his composure, Pandora flew away and continued her way home to the forest.

Two years later she witnessed the young man playing at the Montererey International Pop Festival doing exactly as she suggested! Pandora is truly a very wise owl.

To Be Continued....

Do you know who the young guitarist who Pandora met briefly was? If you do you should e-mail the answer to pandoraapparel@gmail.com and we will randomly select three of the people who answer correctly to get a nice surprise! You can send us your answers until midnight GMT on Thursday 3rd of June to enter the competition. We will announce the winners on our facebook page next Friday the 4th of June!

Upwardly Mobile

Hey everyone (Rob), exciting times here at Pandora Apparel. The response to our Facebook fanpage has been amazing and we're closing in on one hundred fans! A big thank you to everyone who joined for their support. Our twitter page is also up and running and is doing alright. We're up to eleven fans and hoping for some more growth soon! Pandora has been cooing constantly the last few days in appreciation of everyone's efforts.

Developments in rl have also been positive. We have enlisted the reliably stellar web designer Steve Coughlan to shepherd our website to the interweb. Initial discussions were very positive indeed and hopefully we'll have it up and running asap. Monika is working on the graphics as we speak.

In the search for a supplier things have also been mucho bueno. Monika shopped around a bit and we got some quotes from a few different establishments. One supplier in particular looks very promising and hopefully the sample we get from them will be up to scratch! If the sample is good we will post a picture of it for your perusal.

Must also say thanks to the many t-shirt companies that have already come out in support of our venture. So much thanks to Ladyumbrella ladies t-shirts, SkillaFashion, crocktees, inmyshortsleeve, nature creations, GritFX, Design Juices, saucewear and Tees In a Pod.

P.S. this is another t-shirt design that we recently put up on our Facebook fanpage. Hope you like it and feel free to leave your opinion! Bonsai!

Pandora Apparel: Steep Hills and Stairs

This is Jamie, he is a mild mannered Irishman who has held many differing jobs during his first quarter century including, but not exclusive to, being a short order chef in a chipper on a caravan site in West Cork, selling Kirby home maintenance systems door to door in Hawai’i and moving furniture up and down the steep hills and stairs of San Francisco. Upon finishing college he embarked upon a “career” as a projectionist and discovered the beauty of not having his boss looking over his shoulder every five minutes. Jamie is an Aries, harbours an unhealthy obsession for Pearl Jam and is peeved by grammatical errors.

This is Monika, she is a talented auto didactic Polish artist with a healthy disdain for formal education. Her love of drawing developed from an early age as she inherited a talent for creativity from her parents. Her influences have expanded over the years and her art has flourished to include canvas paintings, clay molding and the creation of knick knacks with whatever is at hand. She immigrated to Ireland in 2006 and met Jamie while they both worked at the same cinema. Monika is a Taurus, loves Domo amongst other furry things and is peeved by untidiness.


This is Pandora. She is a very old and wise owl. She travelled all around the world for many, many years untill she flew to Ireland. One night Monika and Jamie heard a rapping on their chamber door. They slowly opened it, peered out and there she was, staring at them with her big, yellow eyes. You should know that she doesn't speak much, however when she does, you have to listen carefully (as we mentioned already, she is a very wise owl, so it would be foolish to ignore her words). And then she spoke to them, saying:

'I want you to put me on your t-shirts!'

And that was that.

Jamie and Monika united to form Pandora Apparel in the hope of opening and maintaining an online shop that will initially stock unusual and quirky t-shirts for the discerning individual, with the ultimate goal of expanding our range to include other mystical items in the future. Unsure of how to begin Jamie and Monika found inspiration for this project in their friend Rob’s success with LadyUmbrella ladies t-shirts and so finally realised that the only way one succeeds in life is through hard work and following through on ones ambitions and ideas (and the words of a wise, old owl). Monika has long looked for an outlet for her creativity and so naturally loved the idea of designing t-shirts. This blog will document the ups and downs and ins and outs of our journey.

Here are two examples of the kind of t-shirts we plan to stock. Click on the picture to make it bigger! What do you think?

You can let us know on our Facebook page or leave us feedback here on our blog.

Why don’t you join us on our journey from zeros to heroes? I really hope you do. You can keep up to date on our adventure on our aforementioned Facebook page and on our Twitter page.

Our web site and youtube page are in the works and coming soon.