Grey and Slate blog
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Most popular designs of March 2026
OK. So last month I talked about the most popular designs of February. I liked the post so much, decided to do it again this month (and let’s see if I can continue it). This past month, there was some movement in the rankings, and, again, some that surprised me. SID month – againMy designs…
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Whence creativity?
I have experience in media-driven businesses: I ran a corporate blog for a global juggernaut, was a writer for magazines and websites, and have always been adjacent to marketing types who like to tap into my writing and video expertise. Therefore, I went into Grey and Slate with full awareness of the hunger the business…
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Most popular designs of February 2026
I was checking out the stats from the shop to see what were the most popular shirts in the store. As in January, most of the top shirts had a hand-drawn element to them. Tho the line up this month was slightly different from January. I think part of this was due to an ad…
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Celebrating women inventors on International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day is celebrated on 08 March. In honor of the day, I want to share the story behind my “Women Inventors” section of my store. Same old storyWhen I started my store, I wanted to do shirts with famous quotes cheekily remixed for makers. For example, Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am”…
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My illustration process: standing on the shoulders of giants
I’ve been struggling to define my process for creating hand-drawn designs. I feel it is more than just ‘tracing,’ in the boring, mindless sense. As I have shared before, I do my hand-drawn designs on an iPad Pro, with an Apple Pencil, in Adobe Fresco. I look for visually interesting images from all sorts of…
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Pause for station identification
I have a long tradition on my personal blog for occasional identification posts on who I am and where I’m going. As I build this business blog, I will do the same here. So here we go: MeMy name is Charlie Schick. By day, I do business development for a foreign government (yes!). By night,…
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How Creative Commons powers my designs
I remember the early days of Creative Commons. Such a subversive idea to make copyright so nuanced and so easily used. To me, the heart of it is all the folks who put their materials online for others to use. Fast forward 25 years later and I turned to CC-licensed works for many of my…
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My first sales event on Grey and Slate, Haberdashers!
My first sales event on Grey and Slate™! All shirts 25% off thru 02 Dec for Etsy’s Black Friday promo. Hand-drawn circuits and maker references (NE555, op-amps, vintage chips). Help me hit 20 sales before year-end. Please share this with folks who like shirts designed for hardware nerds. 🙏 For context:I’ve been posting a new design…
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Why do ‘How-to’ Biz YouTubers think everyone can do what they do and succeed?
I’ve been on a tear these last few months, building up my Etsy store of expressive shirts for makers. Part of the journey has been learning about Etsy, Print on Demand, and design trends. So I spend a lot of time learning from folks on YouTube. One thing that occasionally pops up: some YouTuber shares their…
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Getting into a groove with my Etsy store of marker-inspired t-shirt designs
Back at the start of May, I kicked off the first line of products for my haberdashery. As I mentioned before, this idea was brewing in my head for some time until I honed in on expressive t-shirts for makers and hardware hackers. I am now 3 months in and have been learning a lot about what…
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