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I spend a lot of time reading the board and all the past stuff too cuz I was gone for quite a while, but its not clear to me exactly what some of you guys do. Could you tell me in a list sorta what your shop does altogether? I mean all of the different things that you CAN do?
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Rosemary, My father was the one who was the signpainter. You can check out his site at www.sfpnn.com/al_zanetti.htm
His shop was attached to our house so I spent a great deal of my childhood in his shop watching him letter signs. Letterheads have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Now for me...I'm 40, have been married to my husband Clay for 10 years this summer and my daughter Samantha just turned 9 years old on Wednesday.
We live in the Monterey Bay area, 2 hours south of San Francisco. Clay is the Executive Chef for a large hotel in Monterey, Samantha is in 3rd grade at the Montessori school and I get to work from home and be with my dog and cat all day.
I work for a golf group based in Palm Springs that owns 3 courses, two there and one in Phoenix. I do most of their marketing and web site design. I come up with ideas for the sites and delegate it to some geek in Las Vegas who actually does the work. In the meantime, I get paid to mess around on my computer all day which pretty much explains why I'm here on the board all the time.
We just bought a 56 year old fixer-upper house so doing the fixing up is taking a great deal of our time. If we're not working on the house we're either cooking or watching a baseball game.
Thanks for asking.
-------------------- Kimberly Zanetti Purcell www.amethystProductivity.com Folsom, CA email: Kimberly@AmethystProductivity.com
“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” AA Milne Posts: 3722 | From: Folsom, CA | Registered: Dec 2001
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Boy the list of what we CAN do is kinda different from what we DO do.
I'm a thirty five year veteran of the trade so I can do most anything reagarding signs.
Hand lettering
hand layout
walls (only off a man lift, I won't climb!!! )
windows
airbrush work
gold leaf, surface or glass
pinstriping repair work, custom, restoration, gold leaf, mini graphics
murals, walls mainly....I can do airbrused vehicle art but I shy away from that as I'm not real comfortable with it, plus I'm real slow at it and I'm pretty production oriented.
logo design...with or without the computer
vinyl signs
faux finishing
automotive painting...again, I can do it but would rather not.
Denise can
pinstripe do decorative furniture painting murals
These days, probably 50% of our jobs are body shop repair jobs where we match and replace painted pinstriping, 25% would be pinstriping complete cars or trucks (18 wheelers) and 25% sign work, the majority of that being hand done.
-------------------- George Perkins Millington,TN. goatwell@bigriver.net
"I started out with nothing and still have most of it left"
I pretty much just carve wood. Home based for almost 30 yrs. 30 - 35% small signs and the rest is decorative reliefs. www.ctwoodcarvers.com The site is just a basic thumb of what I do.
We spoke in chat briefly just before you left letterville...you seemed to think I had a problem with women carving....WRONG!!!
Thanks for asking,
Joe,
makin Chips and Havin Fun!
-------------------- Joe Cieslowski Connecticut Woodcarvers Gallery P.O.Box 368 East Canaan CT 06024 jcieslowski@snet.net 860-824-0883 Posts: 2345 | From: East Canaan CT 06024 | Registered: Nov 2001
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You know Rosemary, I wonder that myself some days. Our shop is now doing most commercial work except neon and big electric stuff... Trucks-Wall Signs-Glass Lettering-Carved Signs-Paper Signs-Digital Printing-Banners- Architectural Signs (like aluminum pylons)-Interior Directories & Suite Signs-Dimensional Letters....
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Rosemary, I have seen alot of your dads work since I am originally from Eureka MT. Seen the stuff at the airport last trip back. My old man is still there in Eureka painting ( really painting, he has never ran a computer) at Snow's sign works..uh...I guess west? haha. I'm still carrying on the shop name here in TN (wish I was back in MT) the old way for the most part. Very little vinyl. Mostly painted, carved, sandblasted, weird crap.
When we first moved to MT, Dad did some sub work for a guy that went by the name of "Speedy signs" in Kalispell. He was good, but not that speedy. We lived in Whitefish when we first moved there and dad was painting signs in the livingroom! Mom loved that.
It's really nice to see somebody from where I used to run a muk. (Probably when you were pooping yellow)
Tell your old man he does some pretty great stuff.
But I gotta be partial to my ol man when it comes to the best
Hope to meet you and the crew next time I get to visit the folks.
Being a sign painters kid can kinda suck sometimes, no?
That is so cute.....
-------------------- Snow's Sign Works 865-908-0076 snowman@planetc.com www.snowsigns.com
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message... Posts: 1640 | From: Sevierville, TN | Registered: Jul 2005
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Wow, Kimberly! What a way cool website. He's a true artist. I just love that kind of stuff. That's really a wonderful thing that you still do, George. There aren't a lot of you guys left, no? And I've seen your stuff before, Joe. What cool things you do! Jake, your Dad worked for George Baumbach. He's still here but sorta and sorta not retired, but he's still an old letch! He always stares at us girls when he comes in. I think he's really creepy!
My brother has lived in Big Fork since 1982. My brother in law and I looked into buying Speedy Baumbach's sign shop over 20 years ago. We flew up there and checked things out but decided against it because his prices were too low. We'd have had to triple the prices and likely lose all his clients and then all we would have ended up with was the equipment.
I've known Rosemary's dad since about 1983. I had a customer here in Dallas that used Old English lettering on his signs. Pierre was the only one I knew that had forked out almost $300 for the Old English type font for the Signmaker, so I used to order the letters from him in Montana. He even made some large paper patterns for me so I could cut out letters on my band saw for the client.
When I first got my Signmaker in 1984, I started using intermediate vinyl because it seemed to be much easier to weed and apply. Pierre gave me a lecture about that and told me: "You can't afford to use cheap vinyl on your customers." I've used high performance cast ever since.
When I used to drop in on Pierre in the '80s, there were some youngsters bouncing around his shop. I got to visit Rosemary and Latigo as adults about a year and a half ago when I was up there to backpack with my brother.
-------------------- David Harding A Sign of Excellence Carrollton, TX Posts: 5089 | From: Carrollton, TX, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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You're a cutie, get used to getting looks. Just take them as a compliment. Sounds like you have an interesting family. Shouldn't you be a Gibson girl? Do they still have a factory in Bozeman?
And excuse me for being thick headed, but explain your "Behind every good Woman, there's a man.............waiting."
I'm a Fender man myself, never tried a PRS bass, but the guitars I've tried were to fat/flat like a classical neck. Just my taste.
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This is what Alicia Jennings does,,, Sign/Logo Design Truck Lettering Paint or Vinyl "My Main Diet" Hand Pinstriping Airbrushed Murals Race Car Lettering Wall Lettering/Signs And most important, be a good wife to my husband.
-------------------- Signs by Alicia Jennings (Mudflap Girl) Tacoma, WA Since 1987 Have Lipstick, will travel. Posts: 3820 | From: Tacoma, WA. U.S.A. | Registered: Dec 1999
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work, eat, play, sleep - ( I definately need a vacation) - - -whut do you do, Rosemary? hey I just read Kimberly's reply ( I have a bad habit of posting replies afore reading all the others) here lately a never ending stream of work - order supplies, take orders, make & install signs, do site surveys, change diapers & make bottles, return E-mails, design any proofs that are due at the moment - then the homework with older daughters, gotta have my newspaper & coffee first thing in morning after taking girls to school at 6:30 - then back to bed till 9 or noonish - depending on how many times the phone rings - then install previous nites work - pick up checks - go to the bank -by that time you gotta think about what you gonna do for dinner - you git the idea - oh yea, after dinner ya gotta do that proof that was due yesterday - - -whatever happened to all the time we were supposed to save with the new technology - ????
[ May 06, 2006, 04:25 AM: Message edited by: Carl Wood ]
-------------------- Carl Wood Olive Branch, Ms Posts: 1392 | From: Olive Branch,MS USA | Registered: Nov 1999
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I started out my young adult life being a society dropout & a young father living in the woods in Oregon far from my roots in Chicago. My Chicago born wife & I had enough of roughing it in the backwoods after 5 years, but by the time we figured that out we were ready to go our seperate ways.
I moved to Hawaii, & since I had a natural talent in art & math, I went to school to study Architecture. After 2 years of college, I worked as a draftsman for a while then I moved to New York City & got a job with ASI, one of the largest Architectural sign companies in North America. I had been co-parenting my daughter for 6 years in Hawaii, so I left NYC after a year to move to Santa Fe where my ex lived, so I could continue participating in my daughters life, but not move her to Hawaii every other year since she was now more in need of the continuity with school & friends.
I knew I had found the career for me, so I worked at 2 different signshops in New Mexico over 5 years & then when my ex moved again, I returned to Hawaii & bought out an old signshop from a screenprinter with a stat camera & a bunch of inks & screens, but no computer or vinyl cutter.
I've been running Island Sign for 9-1/2 years now & I have become much more proficient in logo & sign design, as well as in sales & business skills in general. I have mostly done flat signs out of MDO, aluminum, PVC, magnetic material, banners, vehicles & windows. I guess a "quicky-sticky" sort of shop... but thanks to years of influence here in Letterville.. I am know as an expensive shop, but one with an excellent track record for quality design work as well as service.
The last year has had me doing many more dimensional signs as well as large format inkjet prints on my Mimaki. This has pushed me to design cooler stuff & over all I think the printer played a large role in me growing to the point where I now have a second full time employee.
Maybe in the coming year, I can use "smaltz? for the first time, do more sandblasting, & more dimensional stuff of other types. I plan to be free from constant phone & walk-in interruptions, so I hope to take on some more time consuming jobs & learn some new skills.
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All my life I have been a "Starving Artist"
How does one go about listing their attributes.
Sold my first painting to a family in Germany when I was 13 years old. Now I was hooked on graphics of any type.
Pencil,Pen,Paint,Watercolours etc..... anything to keep the creative juices flowing. Work full time during the day and Artist by night. Not selling anything else I realized I needed grooming and Applied to a College to set myself straight. Hence I became a SignWriter. I knew this was a paying ticket to work with. I attented and graduated... Now the workforce.... I landed up with one of the biggest Outdoor Advertising companies in North America. Started of as a labour force and worked up to be a jorneyman pictorial artist working on projects of mass size using Oil Paints and One-Shot Enamels. No such thing as computers....only scale and draw, then paint. In the mean time they had a department that work on illuminated airbrush facias....
OK now the second degree I graduated from.... A full year of freehand and technical Airbrushing.
Now I was the king of my own little world. So to venture on my own!! Being my own BOSS!
Drawings done by hand,Coating and painting everything,Screen films cut by hand,carving and airbrushing, Etc.. and still doing paintings on the side....
The first introduction of vinyl came about but no computer... Project the image on paper and use a carbon sheet under for tracing. Now cut out image with exacto knife and apply.
Now the machine arrives in the industry... $60,000 will cut your letters for you! Great! I got to buy one.... But so did everyone else!
Now the Talent dies and the price wars begin. Over the years the market gets to big in competetion but I can still use my skills of Airbrushing and Paints.
Just when I wasn't looking out come the Digital prints.... Hell now what? Everyone is buying this system as well....More Price Wars.
Well back to College I go and this time for Multi-Media Graphic Designs. Animation/TV commercial/Mag Ads...Etc.
So out of 3 degrees in 30 some odd years, what has this taught myself? I have had some great fun and learnt alot..
But am still the Starving Artist!
I will wait to see what phase 4 will bring!
-------------------- Stephen Deveau RavenGraphics Insinx Digital Displays
Letting Your Imagination Run Wild! Posts: 4327 | From: Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada | Registered: Jan 2000
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Rosemary... I'm a little one man shop, mostly do painted signs, walls,etc., with about 50% of my work being sandblasted hdu and wood. I have simple computer setup with 24" plotter, and that gets used maybe 10% of time, often for sketches and patterns or cutting mask. I do no wraps, large format printing,that sort of work. Why compete with the quicky shops that are already cutting each other's throat? I can also do gold leaf, having worked at a large fire truck manufacturer for 5-6 years lettering fire trucks.
My other job is maintaining a small "homestead" on 1 acre. Have herbs and vegies growing, flower gardens. I am widowed, so I do all my own cooking, laundry, house cleaning, lawn mowing....you get the picture.Sometimes I spend as much time keeping the place up as I do painting signs.
My other love is music...I'm not that great of a guitar picker, but I love the instrument, and practice 2-3 hrs a day...up from about 1 hr two years ago. I go to as many music shows and bluegrass festivals as I can. I guess I like home-grown music.
Lately I've been real itchy to travel...may try some longer get-aways this summer.I have to say that I never flew anywhere before I found the letterheads...now I go to at least 2 meets a year, and have flown enough to have a frequent flyer account. I prefer to drive around though, especially if I can take a few extra days and get off the interstates so I can see the countryside better.
I have been helping my stepson raise his 2 daughters over the years as well. They are getting older now, so they aren't around as much, but they used to come over every weekend. I'm taking my oldest grandaughter to Lodi CA in 3 weeks....she's 20. So I have to include that as well as being a signpainter, house keeper, gardener and music lover, I'm also a pretty involved grand parent.
-------------------- Jeff Ogden 8727 NE 68 Terr. Gainesville FL, 32609 Posts: 2138 | From: 8827 NE 68 Terr Gainesville Fl 32609 | Registered: Aug 2002
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[ May 06, 2006, 03:22 PM: Message edited by: Steve Shortreed ]
-------------------- Jack Wills Studio Design Works 1465 E.Hidalgo Circle Nye Beach / Newport, OR Posts: 2914 | From: Rocklin, CA. USA | Registered: Dec 1998
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Some things I've done....Specialty advertising, screen printing, logo designer, sign painter, furniture designer and builder, muscle car restoration, race car graphics, airbrushing, prototype development and model maker, CNC programmer and operator, university lab technician, injection molder, artist, graphic design.
More recently I have been pusuing a career as a modern day Walldog. I am helping paint large-scale themed interior murals. I am also doing freelance graphic design. I will be starting a new job as a Senior Model Maker in about two months.
But most of my time is dedicated to planning how to attend and afford my next letterhead meet!
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Rosemary, I've been in the biz 25 years. Started in my Dad's body shop and learned to hand letter and pinstripe first.
I have a 2-3 man shop in Oklahoma about 50 mins. West of Okahoma City where we do about everything.
We are doing more and more nice dimensional carved and blasted signs, mostly HDU, along with graphic design, some vinyl, digital work, gold leaf, hand painting, etched glass and some pinstriping.
I'm a drummer since age 15 (42 now) and play in our church band every week. (we do some upbeat stuff!) I have all sorts of hand drums and percussion instruments.
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I'm mostly retired, but spend lots of time on all things VonDutch and going to jazz concerts where my youngest son Eric plays a mean jazz guitar!
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I really had no idea how many truly talented people are here! Mark, its really hard to find and keep a good drummer, no? Dad and Lat do a lot more, but this is what I do. Lat did this one and its a really big carving. All the woodgrains stuff on it is done by hand with a stone cutting tool. Its all precision board on top of precision board.
The the detail of the Bear scene. I do the detail painting on most all of the realistic carvings.
Lat is drilling in the huge steel framework that goes behind it all. Its like a 4"x4" angle steel painted with POR15 and then black POR15 Topcoat stuff.
Its two panels that are 6" thick and like 8'x16' and maybe 30'up in the air.
Its really high up there. We had to use a crane cuz it was insanely heavy, no?
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And I play in Lat's band. This is my Modulus Graphite fretless.
My Fretless Paul Reed Smith. And don't say you can see the frets! Dad sent it back to the factory and they installed abalone markers where the frets would be. Cool, no? My Modulus Graphite is fretless too.
And I instruct in reloading and casting and do a lot of shooting.
And yes I AM wearing ear protection!
This is my 1911sr.
And I develop my own reload data.
My hearing protection is hard to see but its there if you look close, no? They come from the American Musicians Institute and they send you a pair of wax thingies that you put in your ears and then they ahrden and you send them back. You get two concussion thingies back that perfectly fit your ear and you can talk in normal tones but they block any sudden concussion like a really loud Marshall Amp on-stage and rifleshots too. Cool, no? me
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Beautiful country where "LaSalle Industrial Park" sign is.....those white birch trees are one of my favorites! Rosemary, you are a beautiful girl and obviously very talented! It's nice to hear how you love your mom and I'm sure she is even more proud of her daughter!
-------------------- Ellen Day Cutting GoldRushSigns Posts: 77 | From: Florissant, CO | Registered: Jan 2005
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Thank you, Ellen! It really IS beautiful here in northwest Montana. I was born and raised in Lost Prairie and I can't imagine living anywhere else.
This is also some of my paint work. I love to highlight and drybrush stuff.
Oops! I forgot to tell you that this went on a private home under the highest part of the roof. Its a Gargoyle and protects their home from evil stuff. Its 5' wide. I mean 8' wide with the tail. Its hard to see but its on the left side.
The most work I've ever done on a single carving is on the Glacier Park International Airport "Welcome to Montana" carving. It's 6" thick, 5' tall and 18' long. It weighs a ton!! I mean its really heavy. They had to use 18' long angle steel bars to hang it and the wall has 2x2 steel studs in it every 18". I know that cuz somebody just told me.
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I operate a one-man shop, in North Florida, with a creek on one side and a swamp on the other. I do trucks, all kinds of signs but mostly I specialize in sandblasted work. I started out, in 1985, doing some routed signs for a subdivision. I have always loved the smell of a woodworking shop. But alas, nowadays, most of my dimensional work is done with HDU. I do a few lighted signs too.
I just finished renovating an old rotary compressor and a 600lb sandblaster pot which we hope will speed up production considerably. I installed a new fuel pump and filters, starter, thermostat, filled the hydraulic fluid, changed the oil, filter, spark plugs, rebuilt the carburetor. I didn't mind doing the work myself. But I wouldn't want to rebuild the engine. That's where the fun would end.
Then on the pot, I built a new port with my MIG welder, made a gasket for the port out of sandblast stencil, installed new hoses, valves and piping, replaced the mixer valve with a ball valve, built a nozzle valve and installed a 5/16'' nozzle. We fired up the compressor this afternoon and it pressurized the pot to 90 psi in mere seconds. I was happy to see that the pot fittings, port, and drop down lid don't leak! I can't wait to try it Monday. I've got four large subdivision signs to blast.
I want to get more into hand carving, air brushing and gold leaf work. I also plan to start doing more sandblasted stone...really big stones, since I have a couple of suppliers now and a way to handle the stone.
On weekends, my family and I play music, mostly bluegrass but some other stuff too. My daughter plays piano, upright bass, sings soprano lead and harmony vocals. My oldest son plays rhythm guitar and dobro, sings bass. The yougest son plays lead guitar, mandolin, bass guitar, upright bass, sings tenor, lead and harmony vocals. My wife sings alto, harmony vocals and I just love to pick and sang. We're not that good but it's fun. People actually pay us We've got four bookings lined up now.
Now....... I can hear my wife and kids downstairs laughing at a Mr. Bean video so I'm going to join them. Later
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7404 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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Wow, Wayne! That is WAY cool! Bluegrass! And your Family does it too! That's SO so important that Family's do stuff together, no? That's what Dad was doing when he met mom. His band was called Sandy Bottom and I know there's an old picture around here somewhere of him and his band on-stage. I'll try to find it today. He plays a Stelling Red Fox 5 string and the 12 string guitar. When Lat was about 11 Dad started doing sound for us and didn't play much after that. The recording studio began to grow and he spent a lot of his time doing that after work. This is the Stelling Red Fox. It truly does amaze me at all the incredible stuff the members here do. I should have asked about this stuff a long time ago. You read posts but don't actually realize the talent behind them.
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Rosemary, Very nice banjo! I'll bet it sounds mighty fine. It's good to see that you and your family do things like that together as well. Quite impressive signwork you have there too.
I love the ring of a 12 string. haven't played mine in awhile because the bridge is pulled and the action is too high. Need to get it fixed.
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7404 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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Dusty, "Behind every good Woman there's a man....... waiting". When was the last time you took your wife or girlfriend out and she was on time? If you've never had to wait for us to get ready then you have a reeeealy unusual girlfriend! Hang on to her!!
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Hi Rosemary, It's good to see you back here. I hope you can stay for a long while. As a mom I know how it is to worry about a daughter, so make sure you play by the rules your parents set.
I have a shop in rural Saskatchewan. I do whatever comes in the door, some really wacky stuff sometimes. Mostly I like anything that challenges my skills and creativity. I really like 3D stuff and have purchased a sprayer so I can spray encapsulate on foam to make it more durable. I'm hoping to play with it more this summer, I don't really like using it indoors.
I really like gold and glass. That is what I'd like to do most of all. I'm experimenting lots these days with angel gilding and mirroring, sand carving, shaded etching - all fun and rewarding stuff. I have started a new company called Lost Mountain Glass Works. The name is funny because there are no mountains anywhere near Saskatchewan, but we live on a lake that was called Lost Mountain Lake at one time because there is a mirage that looks like a mountain on the other side of the lake under certain conditions. They say some of the original settlers saw it and packed up their belongings and followed the lake to the other side because they wanted to live there, but they eventually ended up back where they started from. The lake is about 80 miles long, so it must have been a long trip back then. I liked the story, brings out the romantic in me, so I chose it for my shop name. I'm still not sure what I am doing for my logo. I have the text all done up, but I keep changing my mind about what kind of image I want to portray. Got any ideas?
-------------------- “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” -Winnie the Pooh & A.A. Milne
Kelly Thorson Kel-T-Grafix 801 Main St. Holdfast, SK S0G 2H0 ktg@sasktel.net Posts: 5496 | From: Penzance, Saskatchewan | Registered: May 2002
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I realized I didn't answer the main topic of your post. I was thinking I was in your "My family stuff" post. Posts sometimes blur together.
So to give you my story.
I started my own company about a year and a half ago. I do vinyl and painted signs. I design and sub out partial fabrication of carved and sand blasted signs, channel letters, light boxes, dimensional letters, and anything else I can't do myself.
My background: My first job was as an apprentice for a commercial artist in Atlanta where I learned to spray auto paint and do fiberglass and work wood, molding and casting various materials, and alot more. He had a great amount of knowledge and I didn't get to learn half the stuff I wanted to there. Then after a couple years he moved to Illinois for a change of pace and to be near a lady he liked.
After that I started in signs when I was 18 at a Speedy Sign franchise, pretty boring stuff. We never did anything dimensional, just vinyl.
I moved to Athens to go to school and kinda got addicted to vintage instruments. I started repairing my own guitars, amps, effects pedals, and then for my friends, and finally the public through the vintage guitar place here in town. I got to work on some great things. Duo-jets, 6124's, old Les Pauls, SG's 335's, 330's, 125's, AC-15's and 30's, Martins, J-50's, LG's, Strats, Teles, Framus, Hofner, Marshalls, Orange, Laney, Twins, Supers, Deluxe Reverbs, Dr.Z, Echo-plex, Echolette, and many more. I really liked that, but felt I need something different.
I was a partner in a production company where we tried to sell TV commercials locally, but my partner was an a$$, so I bailed on that after about a year.
After that I started working at a sign company here in town and worked there for a couple years before starting my own thing. The owner of that shop is one of my good friends and he just bought a large format printer, so I'm learning the ins and outs of that and trying to sell more of it. I'm now just learning to pinstripe and hand letter when I have free time.
My son is a very good drummer, but he uses those little squishy, expanding ear plugs when he plays...I'm interested in those custom fit ear protection gizmos you're talking about - the ones where you send in a wax template from your ear....
Do you think they would be good for a drummer? Would it keep the "bam-bam" from ruining his ears?
Could you give me their website info if they have it or a good contact ? Thanks.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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They're moulded from your son's ears and they have different levels for different applications. Drummers and lead guitarists have this problem more than the other guys. I could stand off to the side away from the amps and drums and its not too bad, but I always wear mine now.
me
Oops! And Kelly, I did pay attention to what you said and I do listen to my parents. Thank you!
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I'm just a pinstriper who does it all by hand with a sword. My tools are strictly painting stuff without a computer and the only program I use is grey matter. This is all I do in my shop which is in town on a main street surrounded by other businesses.
Oh well
-------------------- HotLines Joey Madden - pinstriping since 1952 'Perfection, its what I look for and what I live for'
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Rosemary, I grew up in Billings and made an attempt to find a steady job at some local shops in the Billings area after High school. No sucess - no experience! I left in 82. I didn't get into the sign business until a few years ago when the oportunity arose to buy a friends business. I wished my persistance was stronger in finding a job after high school. I'm going back to vaction in two weeks.
-------------------- Steve Trumbo Michael's Signs 2066 1/2 17 th Street Sarasota, Florida Posts: 46 | From: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: Aug 2005
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I have a background in graphic design and illustration, but ended up working in computer tech support for six years before I decided I needed to get back into an artistic job. I was always doing stuff on the side as it was.
I remember reading signcraft clear back in the early 90s, or maybe earlier. That is where I found a love for signs. I look at signs wherever I go.
Almost a year ago I started working for a sign shop. My boss will tackle just about anything, so we end up doing a lot of different things. I would like to see us do more dimensional stuff. I do most of the design work and I do building and installing sometimes too. I have a great boss, and I love my job.
I have a strong interest in gold and glasswork, which has been the focus of most of the meets I've been to. I've met some great people, and look forward to meeting more this year. Lodi, here we come!
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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Wow! I can't believe all the real talent here! Joey, I remember hearing Dad talk to you a few times. You were the guy that came from New Jersey, no? Or was it New York. I know he said you had a really strong accent. And thank all of you for telling me this stuff. I love pictures and I like reading about real people.
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We began striping horse drawn vehicles, plus building and restoring a few in the early 1980s, and I picked up an early Signcraft, and was hooked. The local signwriter felt I was too old to be an affordable apprentice for him, but said I should try and go it alone, and eventually that's what happened after a few years of work in assorted industries.
We do whatever comes in the door, but not electrical stuff. Probably half or more is brushed or sprayed in enamel, (and some acrylic stuff & timber routing) the balance is plotted vinyl & some digital stuff. We're getting a lot more calls for airbrushing and a few murals. I try to make our stuff not look like it came straight out of a computer. We still decorate or stripe a few carts and buggies and vintage cars. We also do a bit of screenprinting- shirts, corro & stickers, in a small way.
Juggling all that, we have a small farm, with only 14 or 15 cows now (we sold 28 last year), and 14 or 15 clydesdale horses. In the current drought here, finding feed & water is time consuming and costly. It's a good life for the children though!
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Hi Rosemary Nice to get to know you a little. I have really enjoyed this post.
Just a little about me.
I have been in the sign business about 2 years. Prior to that I have done about everything.
We have a little shop in the small town of Macon, MS
We do: About any kind of design and graphics Vinyl lettering, (lots of big truck doors) logo design brochure layouts I enjoy ornamental iron so I try to use wrought iron in my sign frames anywhere I can.
This shop is really just a sideline, my real occupation is Catfish Farmer. That might sound strange to a lot of you but that is a big industry here in Mississppi and Alabama. Here is a picture of my fish farm, I cannot get the whole farm in one pic. I have 8 ponds and we raise about 600,000 lbs of catfish per year.
My wife Juliana and I have been married 8 years, we have 2 sons Austin (6) and Chase (4). We have a fun full life, but wouldn't want it any other way
Your shooting interested me, when I wasn't so busy I was into that. I have a full reloading setup. That can be a lot of fun.
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He always stares at us girls when he comes in. I think he's really creepy! ![[Bash]](graemlins/bash.gif)
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We've got four bookings lined up now. 
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