Bike Stickers!

It's been a year and a half since I last posted because I got swamped in work, as we all do. I've just finished school and will now present something that I, for whatever reason, got involved with a few months back: Bike stickers!

Options 1-7 pictured here were not designed by me, but were nonetheless funny versions of well-known tubing stickers found on nice steel bikes. I won't go into detail about the meanings of the "revised" numbers. In a Facebook group called Two Wheeled Memes for Bicycle Oriented Teens, which I frequent, it became clear that there was an interest in having these stickers, but nobody to sell them. I had already wanted some for a while as well and realized that instead of wishing for someone to take care of this, I should just be the one to do it. I have found myself taking this stance about many things recently. I decided that I would have these made and ship them myself at zero profit - this was purely just to make sure the stickers existed and that people could have them, not for me to have a business. 

I created the above two myself from existing decals and am rather proud of them. The Tange one is a Toy Story reference. "That's not a Lincoln Log!" I am aware anyone would be able to save these images and print them themselves ... I'm not gonna worry about it. I didn't design the original decals, anyway and will never try to profit from these.

I had previously made stickers via Stickermule which I was very happy with, and was receiving discounts every once in a while through email. I used the chance to make the three most popular sticker designs (according to the vote within the group) in clear vinyl. They turned out well and were also well-received.

By March 2019, I had 50 or 100 of each of the above designs produced. The 80% La Croix sticker was designed by another member of the group who wanted to contribute some talent. All of the stickers "sold like hotcakes" and I was shoving several envelopes a day into the mail box for a while until they started to run out.

I obviously kept some of each for myself and started using them. The first sticker to be applied was the Reynolds 666, which I decided to put directly over the original Reynolds 631 decal on my Raleigh Stuntman. I liked the original decal but figured that enough of them existed - plus, the colors worked perfectly with the existing paint job. I bought and built this bike to be a fun bike, and this was a fun sticker.

Other examples here are my 1979 Raleigh Superbe, made of "2030 hi-ten" steel and my 1981 Lotus Excelle mixte. The 2030 frame sticker on the Superbe was in very bad shape so I figured it was no loss to cover it up with something fun. The Lotus got the Tange sticker because it is made of Tange tubing, although not Infinity ...

... which brings me to the Lotus. I took it apart a year ago to update it and never had time to complete it until today. It has been exactly one year since I last rode it. More updates to come.