Andy,

Thanks for adding me as a contributor to your site.
I look forward to saying things about things I may have not had a chance to say about those things other wise. AND, I promise to use spell check every chance I get.
Also, go to Face Book for my latest adventures.

Again, Thanks!
Meanie

Andy: Nice idea for a new contributor to introduce themselves this way, though I would have thought they’d do it by testing out the regular post system rather than the submission form!

This post was submitted by Meanie.

Back in the early days of HYA the thought of letting other people write on HYA scared me, I didn’t want to lose control of what was being put on the site, and heaven forbid something was posted that wasn’t on the schedule! These days I’ve become more relaxed about the situation and realised that for the site to grow and appeal to more people it’s important to have more than just my viewpoint on the site, and to provide all your readers with a wider range of t-shirts and clothing.

I’ve been slowly adding to the writing team over the past few months and I really like it, it feels good to have lots of people dropping in with something they’ve found or to cover the latest news, it feels like HYA isn’t just about me anymore and I like that, I want it to be a bigger part of the t-shirt community and become something that can be a real force to help and support t-shirt brands grow.

To show that Hide Your Arms is no longer a one-man operation (sure, I do most of the heavy lifting, but the load is getting lighter) I have put together a contributors page to recognise the people that make up the HYA writing team. Each writer has a little bio and a couple of links showing you where you can find them around the web, their posts on HYA, and also a picture so that we can put a face to the name that you seen in the byline on each post (like this one, but you guys probably know who I am already).

If you would like to join the team and write on HYA then I am always looking to take people on who have a passion for clothing of any kind (it doesn’t have to just be tees, this site started out being about hoodies, remember?). Please get in touch via the contact form or send me an e-mail (info@hideyourarms.com) letting me know who you are, what brands and kinds of clothes you like, and anywhere I can find your writing online if possible. Experience blogging is definitely not a requirement, though it would be useful.

I joke in the title, but Pinterest is a really cool social & visual bookmarking system and I can see it being quite a lot of fun to use.

As you would expect, you can find Hide Your Arms at pinterest.com/hideyourarms, my boards are a bit sparse at the moment but they will be filled in time. I’m pinning more than just t-shirts and photo gear (yes, a lot of it is from Rigu), just generally interesting things that I see during my day on the internet.

Feel free to follow me and I’ll probably follow you back.

Of course, if you’re into the old school social media you can still connect with HYA on Twitter and Facebook.

Can you imagine if you walked into a house and there were this many cats… it would be terrifying. $10 at TeeFury today.

I know what you’re thinking, this is just yet another t-shirt about imaginary Pinata companies, and when with this pinata meme die? Well, at least this one at Shirt.Woot is based on the 1986 film ‘Three Amigos’.

The Muppets meet Futurama with this Hypnokermit t-shirt at RIPT today.

Qwertee remind us of the good old days when our music was rather delicate.

Very cool 8-bit Doctor Who t-shirt at Shirt Punch today (which I’ll be adding to the epic list of Doctor Who t-shirts).

OtherTees will be launching their new site soon.

Stupidhurts.us have a classic American symbol on their latest shirt.

Take a look at this happy little t-shirt from 24tee.

I certainly never would have expected a Fight Club x Star Trek mashup t-shirt from Tshirt Contest, but here we are.

‘Serenity’ by name, serenity by nature at DBH today.

Be the envy of all your geology classmates with this shirt from BustedTees, which has been busted down to $11 from $20.

Couple of new contest winners are up at Goodjoe.

Tee and Toast remind us that T-shirts are a lovely idea for Valentine’s Day, and that they’ll post a V-Day card for you, to ensure that the receiver doesn’t know it came from you, neat!

TeeCraze have an interview with t-shirt designer Andy Hunt.

Disney have released a Mickey Mouse design inspired by that famous Joy Division album cover. Predictably, music aficionados are treating this like a much bigger deal than it is (much like when I see a t-shirt I take offense to).

Glennz Illustration Process – Blowfish Pranks from Glenn Jones on Vimeo.

Glennz has some illustration videos up for a few different concepts.

Two more shirts released at Camiseteria.

Ray at Lowdtown has posted an article called “custom packaging that won’t break the bank” that will probably interest brand owners.

Terratag have extended their sale until Friday at Midnight.

That promo pic is barely legible, but I can tell you that on.us.tees will give you 20% off their shirts with the coupon cold 2DAMNCOLD from now until February 15th.

Funny how much in my life has changed because I semi-spontaneously decided to write about t-shirts and hoodies one day when I should have been studying for my exams.

Thank you very much to anyone that has ever blogged for HYA, visited the site, linked to an article, commented, advertised, followed on Twitter, liked on Facebook, anything. Anything that anyone does to help this site helps keep me behind these monitors doing something I love instead of some soul destroying job in a cubicle or outside in the cold, and I truly do appreciate it all.

Sure, this is off-topic, but it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

My other website, a camera accessories site called Rigu is holding a little competition, and I would love it if you would enter. The competition runs from now until Friday at midnight and to enter all you have to do is follow @RiguPhoto on Twitter and send out the following tweet:

RT @RiguPhoto: Follow & RT this message before Dec. 16th to win a £10 camera accessories voucher. http://rigu.co.uk #competition

That’s all there is to it, the winner will be notified before the end of the weekend. Why are you still here? Go, tweet!

In the past on HYA I have written individual posts for individual deals on Black Friday, and frankly that was a lot of work and made the blog very messy, even if it was probably better for traffic. This years I’m going to be creating a single post that I will continually edit and grow throughout the week. As I update the list I will post tweets to notify you all, and also put reminders into the daily news roundup.

Store owners, if you want to ensure that your deal is included please be sure to tweet me, leave a message on the HYA Facebook page, send an e-mail using the comment form, or use the news submission form, and it will be included, no matter how much your brand sucks, we’re going for quantity over quality this year!

I will also be duplicating the list over at ShirtDeck for companies that have released coupon codes for Black Friday, ensuring that it is as easy as possible to find t-shirt deals.

I’ve been talking about this new project quite openly on Twitter and Facebook over the past month or so, but things never really feel official until I’ve talked about them here on the main blog. Hide Your Arms is my passion, and it’s practically my job too, but when I say practically a job I mean that it doesn’t generate enough income to maintain my expensive lifestyle of eating one takeaway a week and swimming in cold lakes. Fortunately I like more than just t-shirts, so I thought it was time to do something else, and that’s where Rigu comes in.

Have you ever noticed that no matter what your camera looks like, the things that come with it tend to be grey or black or generally boring? I have, I have a white DSLR, clearly it’s a cry for attention, but looking at it made me wonder why there weren’t people out there selling colourful and interesting accessories for cameras. Why do we all accept that there are millions of t-shirts out there to suit your style but we have to stick with what Canon or Nikon put in the box as an afterthought?

So instead of thinking about it I did something about it, and I’ve opened a shop selling cool and colourful camera straps and a few other accessories. The selection isn’t massive at the moment but will be steadily growing over the next few months. In time I hope that Rigu will be able to offer straps and camera bags that have been designed in collaboration with artists. That’s something that’s never been done before (as far a I know), and I am looking into making it happen, it sure is exciting to be a pioneer.

I don’t want to go on about it too much but if you have questions then you know how to get in touch with me (contact form, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, comments on this post). I of course would love to receive any and all comments about this new venture of mine, I want/need it to be big, and to do that I will be needing help and support from others. Take a look around and let me know what you think. Please note that in spite of opening this shop HYA should not be effected too much, I still intend to post just as much as usual, I believe that I can balance the two.

Check out the main shop at Rigu.
Find it on Twitter.
Like it on Facebook.
Rigu is also sharing cool photos and news on Tumblr.

Reddit is rapidly becoming my one of my favourite websites, if I’m bored I know exactly where to go to waste an hour, or to make sure I don’t get to sleep early, ever, and just lie in bed staring at articles and comment threads on my iPhone.

Reddit is a huge site, so I presumed that it would have an active subreddit (if you aren’t aware of Reddit, a subreddit is basically a sub-forum to the whole site) dedicated to t-shirts, yet the largest one I found had less that 100 people that had subscribed to it, and it wasn’t very active at all (there were posts on the frontpage that were over 6 months old). I think that’s a bit of a travesty as Reddit could be a great place for t-shirt lovers, sellers, and designers, so I’m trying to make a concerted effort to get the place a bit more active and hopefully boost the number of people that subscribe to it. It’s a fairly self-serving aim since if it becomes popular I will be able to get HYA content seen by more people, but I think that it’s okay to help myself if I’m helping other people too.

Please check out the Tshirt Subreddit and subscribe if you’re a member there, if you’ve never visited Reddit before, my apologies, you won’t be getting much else done today.

the HYA store is powered by the Big Cartel storefront platform, so I keep an eye on developments coming from the BC team, and this latest update is pretty nice. Previously, if you wanted to give a discount on goods you had a blanket discount of a coupon code that applied to a whole order and every item in the store. That changed last week when they introduced a few new, welcome, features:

The new discounts feature (in your admin under Promote > Discounts) gives you the ability to build a collection of unique, creative deals to reward loyal customers and entice new ones. To that end, we’ve packed this feature with a handful of highly requested goodies.
What’s new with Discounts?

Discounts now come in three flavors: percentage off, flat-rate off, and free shipping
Require customers spend a certain amount, or buy a certain number of products, before the discount can be applied
Have your discount apply to the full order, only to products in a certain category, or even just to one specific product
Give your discount a friendly name that is shown to your customers when they enter the code
Get a random code for your discount with the push of a button (or roll of the dice)
Specify a date when your discount can start being used, perfect for midnight sales or product releases
Discounts can now auto-expire after a certain number of uses, or on a certain date
You no longer need to delete discounts to expire them, and we keep a full history of your expired discounts
Quickly share discounts with your Facebook and Twitter communities

All mighty handy I’m sure you’ll agree. Now if they’d add a ‘Europe’ shipping option I’d be a happy man.