CUSTOM CREATIONS - Dirty Circus

Today was the final day of our outdoor tournament season where I work.  What does that mean???  Well, I won't be working long hours for many days in a row anymore.  It'll be back to some level of normalcy.....and I am so glad it's here.

It's been a long, but fast summer so far (if that's at all possible).  I've had little time to enjoy the sportscard hobby, but have perused ebay on occasion, follow some twitter jibber jabber and tonight - I got back on the custom creation wagon.

It's been a LONG time since I've done any creating.  Part of it is that my brain had just gone mushy with customs.  Part of it was the lack of inspiration.  Part of it was I just didn't have time (or should I say I didn't give it the time).

A couple of posts that I read this week changed my attitude and effort on the matter.  The first was from a fellow Vancouver Canucks fan who makes custom Canucks cards to send through the mail.  But these are bang-on replicas of existing designs....and they are outstanding.  What I really enjoyed seeing were the players that only had a cup of coffee with the 'Nucks, yet there's a photo...and a card.  Outstanding.

The second is a blog post from custom card creator Bad Wax.  In a nutshell, it's a call out to custom creators to collaborate on a vintage set - from scratch.

The first "task" was to come up with a product and brand name.  You've all seen those cheesy vintage sour tonic-type of ads, mini bon-bons and such.  Since card collecting at the time was predominantly a male thing, the task was to come up with a male-targeted product.

Here's what I came up with...

The name "Dirty Circus" is just a silly pair of words that I thought sounded cool together.  Other finalists for my product name were "Yatsi" and "Chappelle's", but I didn't see guitar strings when I thought of those names.

I think it would be cool to put hobby cards in guitar string packs.  One card per pack (a little smaller than cardboard today, but bigger than a tobacco card...with the opportunity to land a full 4x4 sized card).  And I feel like the cards are on black backgrounds as opposed to the normal "cardboard" colored products.  Think Upper Deck Black.....70 years ago.

I don't know what the next step in the process will be, but I do know that I had fun building this tonight and am looking forward to continuing on down the path.

And maybe this will get me back into more custom building.  I feel as like I need it.

And if you think my idea sucks.....well jump on into the mix and get your Photoshop skills honed.  Join in on the fun!!!


Oh, and by the way......I hope everyone is having a great summer so far.