(Above: strawberryluna’s Forget Me Not Flower Birds tee for the Tshirt Art Show by Lightning Bug Gift Co.)

The T-Shirt Art Show! We’re thrilled to be a part of this wonderful project by our good friends at Lightning Bug Gift Co that is helping artists help artists stay on their feet and survive financially during the coronavirus pandemic.

For us late late Spring – Winter is a time full of art festivals and craft shows. We do about 12-15 shows a year, all around the country and those kinds of shows + wholesale comprise the majority annual income. Not to mention our social lives! So many of our closest friends are folks we’ve met through our travels and at art fairs.

But, clearly due to the coronavirus pandemic that way of life has changed. Traveling to do shows and sell our artwork in person has been put on the backseat for the foreseeable future, likely well into 2021 heartbreakingly.

So when our friends Lightning Bug Gift Co hatched this virtual pop-up shop plan and invited us to be a part of it? Well, we couldn’t say yes fast enough!

Our Pennsylvania Dutch folkart inspired design, Forget Me Not Flower Birds will only be available *exclusively* through the The T-Shirt Art Show website and for a limited time only so don’t snooze, or you’ll lose! All shirts are available for pre-order from July 5th-19th. All shirts will ship by August 3rd. Click here to purchase our Forget Me Not Flower Birds Tshirt and to see all of the designs in this time-limited show click here.

(Above: Lightning Bug Gift Co’s Tshirt Art Show, all hand printed tees with designs by working artists, hand printed in Pennsylvania.)

Here’s how it works for all of the artists involved:

Many of our shows through September have been cancelled, and while we know this is for the best, we’ll really miss seeing all our art show friends this summer. We decided to put together a little t-shirt art show so we can check-in with our friends and help recoup some of all of our lost sales from canceled shows + you can get some new shirts with fun artwork!

$10 from each shirt sales goes directly to the artist and we use what’s left to cover garment, printing, and shipping costs. All shirts are available for pre-order from July 5th-19th. After the preorder closes we’ll need two weeks to print and ship all the orders, so all orders will ship by August 3rd. Support the arts and get come cool gear = win/win!

For our design, we reached back into Allison’s childhood in Southeastern PA and worked with traditional Pennsylvania Dutch symbolism via color, flowers, and birds with some strawberryluna style updates for a little hexology in every shirt. We chose Forget Met Nots for the flowers over the more traditional Tulip motif, as we are all a little lonely in quarantine and social distancing mode. Blue represents Protection, Calm, and Peace. The goldenrod orange-yellow color symbolizes Abundance, Love, Health, and Sunshine, while the Red connects to strong emotions of Love and Creativity. The 2 birds connected to the Forget Me Not stems are Distelfinks, small Goldfinches, symbolizing Double Good Luck & Happiness, and when facing away from each other like Doves of Peace, they also represent Trust.

Below are all of the Tshirts and designs on sale now through July 19th., 2020. The participating artists are (in the order shown):

• Horrible Adorables
• Logan Schmidt Illustration
• migration goods
• Squirrel Tacos
• strawberryluna
• The Art of Brian Middleton
• Worker Bird
• Yeahyelhsa
• Alternate Histories
• Arsenal Handicraft
• Cricket Press
• Dane Horvath
• Doug Eberhardt
• Emily McGaughey
• Exit343 Design
• garbella