Phew! It's been a while since I've blogged. With all our recent wedding planning I've come to appreciate and admire where I live and the small businesses that make things happen even more. A lot of you have messaged me asking for my favorite spots in spokane, whether you're moving here or just visiting. This post will be updated and added to, I'm sure! 

Where to Eat

• Wooden City Try their pepperoni pizza, stuffed peppers and literally any of their drinks.
• El Que A tiny spot for great tacos and the perfect marg. Check out their parent restaurant:
• The Elk The BBQ chicken quesadillas are a MUST, so is their corn pasta salad and their caesar is cravable. 
• TTs BBQ Literally anything here is good. We order a couple of plates of meat and all the sides. My favorite is their brisket, beans and cornbread. You MUST try the banana pudding. 

Date Night

• Hogwash Whiskey Den A cozy basement spot with great ambiance and dimmed lighting. Literally any of their drinks are good and same goes for their food.
• Durkins Again, literally any drink here is good. The daquri is my fave. You should probably get the burger and then pop downstairs in their basement bar for a nightcap.

Places to Shop

• Cues On trend designers that you can't find anywhere else in spokane. The owner has the best taste and you will walk out looking great
• French Toast Baby for your kiddos and some fun decor and stationery for you, too. 
• Reece Boutique Super cute clothes on the Northside of town. Great selection of trendy jackets, graphic tees and dresses.
• Ritters Another Northside spot. Can't shop here without getting something. Perfect gifts for anyone on your list. If you're looking for gifts downtown try:
• Atticus For candles, books, unique finds and grab a coffee while you're there.

Hair Salons

• Luxe. Salon and Spa I see Meg the owner, everyone there is a hair guru and this is especially the spot for extensions.
• Dept. Z Amazing location, coolest salon, Zoe the owner is a goddess. They're stocked with my favorite Davines. They've got a cute little shop in the front, too.

Brewery

• Four Eyed Guys Their sours are AMAZING. We love the owners, they are the sweetest people. Get a cheese board AND the butter board. Thank me later. They're also now serving coffee and breakfast.
• Iron Goat I love their selection of beers and their food. Can't go wrong, cool vibe too.
• Brick West A fun, popular place with good energy. Great place to go in warmer weather and sit outside.
• NoLi Get a pretzel. Love their seltzers. Owners are rad. 

Photographer

• Madison Hare Is my girl. She has the best energy and takes the best candid, gorgeous photos. 
• Sydney Baye Love her. Fun personality and will make you look and feel like a queen. Occasionally has great family sessions. 
• Ruben Lesh We did a family sesh with him and he was wonderful, great with our kids. 

Bakery

• Rind and Wheat Order a cheeseboard online and go pick it up. Life changing. They also have a huge selection of cheeses and wine.
• MiFlavour Overwhelmingly good. Their croissants are amazing, my kid's love their macarons and their gelato is the bomb. 
• Chaps For sure also eat breakfast here. Grab a huge box of pastries to take home. The owner is the sweetest and the place has the cutest decor.

Juice/Smoothies

• The Wellness Tree A one stop shop for everything healthy. Get an acai bowl.
• Huckleberries Also a great natural market. I get the mermaid juice and add ginger. 

Vegan

• Boots Family owned (amazing family owned) with a wide selection of vegan and vegetarian foods. Get a pumpkin waffle for breakfast. I'm addicted to their power greens. The kids love their cupcakes. 

Thank you so much for reading! Any other categories you'd like me to address or suggestions I should try? Leave them in the comments. 

XO!

Blake 

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BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

Sit down and spend some time dreaming up your designs, buy a fun notebook to store ideas and sketches. I recommend starting with 3 designs, which is 450 pieces total.

Our minimum order is 300 per style, 150 per design. 300 tees is about a roll of cotton, so we don’t make any less or would produce a ton of wasted material.

While our minimums can sound daunting, they are totally doable. I’ve seen small shops succeed time and time again.

Start to brainstorm about your intended audience, the story behind your designs (always good to have a great caption to pair with the tee), and whether you plan to make gender specific or unisex. I recommend starting exclusively with kid’s tees, or women’s tees. Once you’ve grown a bit, you can add from there. It’s just good to establish some kind of customer base.

Come up with a brand name, make sure the website/IG are available, and make an Inspo board on Pinterest based off the vibe you intend to create.

BEGINNING:

Let’s say you pick 3 designs, where do you start? We can recommend a ratio of sizes (18m-6y) or you can pick your own. You’ll want to nail down your numbers with us and place your order, the fun stuff comes after. We’ll get going on the cutting and sewing, and you can plan your colors and designs. We take 50% deposit up front and the rest is due at completion, about 4-6 weeks later.

Once your order is placed, you’ll want to pick your colors. This is my favorite part! We use the Pantone color system, which is basically a universal color language. Want to see your color options? Click this link and select FHI Cotton TCX from the dropdown menu. You can also download the Pantone app on your phone to pull colors from specific images that inspire you. That’s my personal favorite method. I also find inspiration by the color's names. 

For 450 pieces, 3 designs, you’ll send us your 3 Pantone colors about two weeks after ordering. Once we’re done cutting and sewing, your garments will head to the Dyehouse where they’re dyed to your specified Pantone colors.

When the Dyehouse is finished, your order heads back to us for quality control and is ready to be picked up by the printer.

FINALIZING YOUR DESIGNS

I strongly suggest starting this process with some knowledge of Adobe Illustrator or having a graphic designer on hand. I personally can help you with your designs if you need it, but will charge by the hour. You’ll need three designs for the front, as well as a design for your size labels which will be printed on the inside of your garment. You want to keep your art SIMPLE. That is my biggest piece of advice. Don’t make it too busy, don’t pick too many colors, think about how it will look on the tee. Another big mistake I’ve seen is picking art that is too similar to the color of the garment, or font that is too skinny to read once someone puts a filter on the image. You want your design to be iconic, bold, and stand out. 

Now is a good time to go to youtube and look at the process of screen printing to educate yourself a little about how the design is printed on the tee. This makes everything easier for you, us, and the printer we use. Once your designs are finalized, I’ll tell you exactly what is needed to send to the printer.

While printing isn’t our provided service, we have a great one on hand and they pick up directly from us. We’ll help you coordinate your printing, pick it up, and ship it right to you when it’s finished.

SELLING

This is a unique process for everyone, I recommend using Shopify as it is super user friendly and the templates are great. You’ll want to get a newsletter subscription to collect contacts and keep in touch with your customers, I recommend Mail-chimp.

Crisp, high resolution product photos are a must. David from Up Photo Co is great for that or you can take and edit your own. 

Create your instagram, the first posts can be your inspo board you already made from instagram. Start networking and getting the word out there, share your BTS with family, friends, and your personal instagram following. Reach out to us if you need tips or help with this part! We’re on board and happy to coach whenever we can.

Alright guys, that’s all for now! Interested in starting? More questions? Just email me (Blake) at hello@jeanandjune.com. It's a wild ride and a huge learning curve, but it’s been the coolest perk of this job to help make your ideas a reality. I'm happy to use my experience to try and make this a smooth and user friendly process for everyone, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

XO, Blake

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If there's anything I know it's that in the mix of busy mornings, sleep deprived nights, lunch packing, outfit picking and forgetting where on earth you left your hot coffee which will now be cold, there is no time for a crazy extensive makeup sesh in the morning. I consider myself pretty into beauty products and have tested quite a few. I'm writing this post to spare you the time and money by sharing my tried and true faves, nearly guaranteed to give you a well rested and youthful look. Makeup should never be a necessity, but there's nothing wrong with a little bit of self-care to add a pep to your step. Now let's get to it:

1. BELIF - The True Cream Aqua Bomb ($38) I can't stress this enough, always start with a moisturized face. Make sure you've cleansed and exfoliated and then find a moisturizer that leaves you with just the right amount of dew. The one linked here is my fave, all year round. 

2. IT COSMETICS - Your Skin But Better CC+Illumination Cream ($38) I'm literally sharing my secret weapon with you guys. This cc cream is just enough coverage and has a slight brightening effect that makes me look well rested (even though we know that is very unlikely true). I also recommend getting the brush linked below.

3. IT COSMETICS - Skin Perfecting Brush ($48) It might not seem worth it but this is a total buy once, cry once thing. It provides a buffed and even application. A must have. 

4. NARS - Bronzing Powder in Laguna ($40) Never, I repeat never, forget your bronzer. Apply in the shape of a 3 with an angled brush to your temples, cheeks and jawline. Maybe a dab little on your nose (careful, don't overdo it). Then use a very fluffy brush to blend.  

5. ANASTASIA BEVERLY HILLS - Brow Definer Medium ($23) Don't forget your brows, I really like this pencil because it gives me a natural fill without having to be too careful about what I'm doing. It's subtle and hard to mess up. 

6. CLINIQUE - Lash Power Mascara Long-Wearing Formula ($19) I've never loved mascara because it very quickly falls off my lashes onto my under eye area. This is the only one I've ever been able to wear and had stay put. It lasts all day and washes off easily with warm water. Winning! 

There you have it! Hope that was helpful. Make sure and tag me in your pics. XO!

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One of my absolute favorite things to talk about is our manufacturing process. The first time I visited LA and stepped behind the scenes, I fell in love with everything about it. When I started my company, I knew I wanted to be involved in the manufacturing process. If I was contributing more "stuff" into the world, I wanted to feel good about that "stuff". My trips now to LA are always a whirlwind; the whole process behind the fashion industry is so gritty, nonstop and not at all glamourous. I love that about it, though. It feels great to be immersed in the energy. I'm going to walk you through a summary of every step behind our tees and sweatshirts, I hope you find it as fascinating as I do. 

STEP ONE: CUT

First things first, the fabric. We have a few fabric suppliers we work with. We use all cotton, no synthetics (they won't dye properly). The fabric is knit in LA, typically from yarn sourced from India. The fabric arrives in rolls and is delivered to the cutting facility.

When we start an order, the first things we need to know are a. What are we making? b. How many are we making? and c. What ratios are the sizes? That last one will make more sense in a little bit. But for an example, let's say we are going to make 300 women's sweatshirts. We typically make 50 XS, 100 SM, 100 MED and 50 LARGE. That's a ratio of 1-2-2-1. This will make more sense when I talk about the next step. Once we have all the information, we send it over to our pattern-maker and she prints out what's called a marking. It's essentially a guide for cutting the fabric pieces, you can see it pictured below: 

Essentially, If you have a ratio of 1-2-2-1 over 300 pieces, you're going to roll out the fabric in 50 layers. The sizes with a ratio of 1 are going to be cut once (50 pieces), sizes with a ratio of 2 will be cut twice (100 pieces). That will give you the proper amount of garments. They literally cut the fabric with a saw, it's pretty cool to see.

STEP TWO: SEW

Once the fabric is cut, it's ready to go to the next spot: the sewing facility. We have our own sewing facility, you'll see it pictured below. The sewing part is pretty self explanatory. There's important details like stitch quality, using all cotton thread, ect. but I won't bore you with the specifics. The tees are sewn and then will be ready for the dyehouse.

STEP THREE: DYE

The dyehouse is probably my favorite part of the whole process. I talk about "vintage washing" and "garment dying" a lot and I'm excited to actually explain what that means in this blog post. Typically, when you buy a shirt, It's sewn from fabric that's already been dyed. That means, when you wash your shirt, you're going to end up with something a little different than how it looked when you brought it home from the store.  We use a process called garment dying, meaning our shirts and sweatshirts are dyed AFTER they are sewn. They're washed in huge washing machines with dye (or pigment) and enzymes to break them in and make them ultra soft. They're then dried before printing making them pre-shrunk.

Once the tees are finished dying, they go through quality control and are picked up by our printer. The printer silkscreens each tee and ships them to our warehouse so we can get them out to you.

We also make blank tees for other brands, for more information about that you can contact us at hello@jeanandjune.com.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments. 

XOXO, BLAKE

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