This past week has been pretty darn amazing.

One of the main reasons for this was because I got to spend lots of time with Joe ^_^

I also got to meet up with lots of other wonderful people too! :D

So… on Wednesday, I met up with Calum and Joe. We walked around Meadowhall shopping centre and bought some Pokemon tattoos (which I have yet to use). Then we went back to Barnsley to see Calum performing with his Cello, which was pretty badass. Neither Joe or I are musical at all, so it was difficult to tell whether Calum was any good or not, but we decided that Calum was almost certainly an amazing cellist *nods*.

Then, on Thursday, I travelled down to London. I spent the first night hanging out with Dave and Charlie, which is always going to be fun. They made me eat at wagamamas though, which wasn’t so good. Well, it was good; the food there is delicious, but I suck at using chopsticks, so it always feels like such a struggle to actually eat the food. Food should not take that much effort to eat. It was nice though. I had the vegetarian ramen dish :)

Charlie was feeling a bit ill on the night so went back to his hotel room after the meal, but Dave and I stayed out and had a casual drink while talking about lots of lovely things.

On Friday, we woke up early to go for a meeting with the RNLI (the Lifeboat charity who sent us mystery packages last year). The meeting went really well I think. The coolest part about the meeting was that it was actually held on the River Thames! There was a boat attached to the river bank which just floated on the river, and the meeting was held on it. It was so weird when we first got there, because the meeting room looked like any meeting room you’d find in a normal building; it had a big conference table, computers, a big screen to project videos onto, etc. The only difference with this meeting room was that it swayed back and forth as water lapped up against the side of the boat xD

After the meeting we got to go out for a ride along the river thames in a lifeboat. That bit was pretty exhilarating! The views of London were great, and it was just so cool to be zooming along the river thames on an RNLI lifeboat!

The rest of Friday was fun too. I hung out with Tom, Becky and Joe for a while, and then went to Southbank to meet up with Dave, Paul and Sophie. Sophie is a complete legend! She let Dave and I stay with her for the next couple of nights, which was just so lovely of her <3

On Saturday there was a YouTube gathering that I went to. I met lots of cool people - and it was also nice seeing Tino and Chris again. My favourite part about Saturday was going to inSpiral Lounge for lunch. It’s a vegetarian/vegan cafe in Camden Town with an amazing menu. I had a great margherita pizza with a side salad of leafy things, and for dessert I had a vegan, raw, chocolate cake - IT WAS LUSH!

Oh, another great thing about the gathering on Saturday was that I got to meet Gary, the genius behind CheekTV. He’s super duper lovely. Here’s a picture of Dave and I with Cheeky:

omg, a rare glimpse of Johnny without bright light on his face! xD

Please be aware that it was gone midnight when this picture was taken, and I’d been drinking alcohol, so it’s not my fault that I look horrible, okay? ^_^

Sunday was possibly my favourite day, because Joe and I got to hang out together all day. I took him to Cyber Candy, showed him Hamley’s Toy Store (the biggest toy store in Great Britain), we spent ages in Covent Garden watching the street performers, we went to the Apple Store to make a video for DaveZers, and we had yummy Ben&Jerry’s milkshakes in Leicester Square. BEST DAY EVER! <3

It's impossible to describe just how awesome Joe actually is. He's one of my all-time-favourite-people. The past 4 days have been brilliant, and it would be so good if Joe lived in the UK so we could see each other all the time, but alas… he lives in stupid New Zealand ;P

But yes, I’m super glad I got the chance to meet him, and I’m sure I’ll see him again at some point (even if it’s not for a good year or two).

In other news, Jazza and I shall be going on holiday to New York in just over a week WHICH IS SO EXCITING! July is pretty much shaping up to be one of the best months of my life! ^_^

I apologise for being so enthusiastic in this blog post. I feel like Parker off Friends.

It’s like I want to take a mental picture of you all…. CLICK!

Please don’t hate me.

Much Love,

Johnny <3

Tomorrow I’m meeting up with Joe; the father of my child. It’s all very exciting.

I didn’t really ever expect I’d get to meet Joe IRL what with him living half way around the world in New Zealand… but guess what?! HE CAME TO ENGLAND!

So yes, tomorrow I’m going to go hang out with him and Calum. I’m excited. It’ll be fun.

Then, on Thursday I’m going back down to London again for a couple of days. This will also be fun.

I sent 3 new t-shirt designs off to the printing line today too, which is exciting. I can’t wait for them to be ready. I’ll post pictures and stuff of the new designs in the next few days ^_^

Also (in other exciting news) I just found out via twitter that my BFFL did well in her uni degree, which makes me all happy and proud of her, and stuff :)

I should go to bed now, so that I’m not all zombie-like tomorrow when I meet Joe for the first time.

Sorry my blogs have been lame recently. They’ve all been quick-update-type-posts-with-little-substance. I apologise for this.

(._. )

Johnny <3

Apparently it’s been 12 days since I last posted a blog. That’s 2 days shy of a fortnight. THIS WILL NOT DO JONATHAN!

The last couple of weeks have been busy though, what with my trip up to Newcastle, and my other trip down to London, and… STOP MAKING EXCUSES JONATHAN.

Exciting things have been happening. The meeting with the BBC went well. I’m still planning on moving up to Newcastle in a couple of months. T-shirt things have been keeping me busy.

Other exciting things are planned to happen in the near future too. Joe is coming over from New Zealand soon. I’m going to New York next month. Etc.

I don’t really feel like writing about all these things right now though. I’m feeling lazy. Also, I’m in a weird mood right now. I can’t think of a good word to describe it though… “bleh” is the best word I can think of.

I think I might go and buy some iron brew WKDs to drink to make me feel better.

Or maybe some Red Bull.

I’m a little bit in love with the guy in this picture <3

I love the internet. It’s really good. Lately though, I’ve been….. I don’t know where I was going with that, so I’ll just stop.

Bleh.

Here is a cute picture I found the other day which I liked.

This is quite possibly the worst blog post ever written.

… welcome to my world of insecurity and paralyzing self doubt

Yes, it’s definitely time to go buy some WKD.

Much Love,

Johnny <3

nb: only my family is allowed to call me Jonathan :P

I was bored today so I decided to make a new youtube banner for my videos page. This is what it ended up looking like:

I tried uploading it to pumpkinsplat to see what it would look like, but it seems youtube doesn’t like animated gif images anymore, so it doesn’t display properly… ahhh well. It’s probably for the best anyways. I think the image is a bit too “OMG LOOK AT ME, AREN’T I PRETTY?!” to be a mere banner. People would end up just watching the flashing banner instead of watching the videos :P

In other news, I bought 2 pairs of shoes from primark today. Here are the grey canvas ones I got. I can’t believe they only cost £3.91!

I couldn’t be bothered to take a proper picture of them with my camera, so I just swung my webcam round and took this picture… that’s why the quality is so poopy… sorry!

I really like the shoes though ^_^

Hope everyone else’s day was good too?! :D

Johnny <3

This week is going to be exciting :D

On Tuesday I’m traveling up to Newcastle to view some apartments, as I’ll hopefully be moving there in August. I’ve been looking online for some 1 bedroom apartments which are available to rent, and I found a few which I’ve arranged to have a look at.

The apartments I’ve been looking at are all right next to the Quayside, which is a really pretty part of Newcastle. The whole Quayside area has been regenerated in recent years, and it looks lush now ^_^

If I manage to rent one of these apartments then I’ll be a stones throw from the millenium bridge, the sage music venue, and the baltic museum, as well as being a few minutes walk from the city centre where all the shops, bars, restaurants, train station, etc are.

It might be a bit of a struggle to afford the rent each month, but I’ve got a few projects in the pipeline for the next few months, as well having money coming in from the t-shirts, so I should be able to afford it. If all else fails I could always freelance as a live nude model… or something ;)

Here are some pictures of one of the apartments I’m going to see:

How amazing would it be to live in a place like that?! ^_^

Then, on Friday I’m traveling down to London for a meeting with the BBC. I’ll hopefully be working on a project with them later in the year, and this meeting will essentially decide whether or not the project gets commissioned, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it goes well. Keep your fingers crossed for me too :P

It’s always fun going down to London; it’s one of my favourite cities to visit. There’s lots of interesting things to see and do there, and even when I’m not doing anything in particular, I just enjoy walking around, taking the underground to different places. It’s fun. Also, I’ll hopefully get to see some of my London peeps while I’m there. Becky, James, Tom… I’m looking in your direction here ^_^ If any of you other London people are free on Friday though, let me know! :D

Oh, I’m also getting a hair cut on Thursday. My hair isn’t particularly long right now, but it’s been super hot the past few days, so I’m thinking summer is officially upon us. And I like having short hair over the summer. It keeps my head nice and cool xD

Johnny <3

Something happened a couple of weeks ago which made me feel pretty terrible. I was walking down the street with Conor, and there was a pigeon walking just infront of me. I sort of shooed the pigeon away with my foot as I kept walking. As I did that, the pigeon flew up out of my way, and headed across the road which was next to us… at that very same time a double decker bus was driving along the road, and the pigeon flew straight into it :(

I heard a massive thud as the pigeon hit the front of the bus. I didn’t see what happened to the pigeon, but I doubt it would have survived being hit by a huge bus.

If only I’d not been walking along the path at that exact time, or if only I’d made more of an effort to walk around the pigeon instead of shooing it out of the way… the pigeon would still be alive :(

It made me feel awful.

It’s strange though. Life and death is happening around us ALL the time. In the time I’ve been writing this blog post, hundreds of babies around the world will have been born. Hundreds of people will have died. Hundreds of flies will have been splattered on car windscreens, and hundreds of eggs will have been laid by hens.

It’s impossible to feel sad for all the terrible things that are happening in the world, and it’s impossible to feel happy for all the wonderful things that are happening. What makes us decide which things are worth feeling bad about, and which things aren’t?

And it just makes you think… like… what is the significance of it all? Why does any of it even matter?

I don’t know. I guess that’s one of life’s great unanswerable questions… or something.

Sorry for posting such a philosophical entry… but what else is there to do on a Sunday afternoon other than to philosophise?! :P

Much love,

Johnny <3

I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago, trying to get to sleep, and I suddenly had an awesome idea about how to release a limited edition t-shirt design! SO, sometime in the next couple of months I definitely want to do this…

The idea is to have a limited batch of just 54 t-shirts made. Then, instead of numbering each t-shirt from 1-54 like you might expect, I’ll buy a pack of playing cards and send out a different playing card with each tee! So, each t-shirt will be associated with a different card from the deck. Then, when someone asks you which t-shirt you own, you can be like “I got the three of diamonds”… and I just think that’s quite a cool, novel idea for numbering the shirts.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… “Johnny, there are only 52 cards in a deck… why would you get 54 t-shirts printed?!”

Well, this is the super cool part…

Along with the 52 regular cards, I’ll also send out 2 of the t-shirts with the Jokers from the deck. With these Jokers, I’ll also include a £20 note, and possibly some other cool little bits and pieces which won’t go out with any other orders. That way, if you are one of the 2 lucky people to get a Joker, you’ll essentially be getting a free limited edition t-shirt (because of the £20 note), plus you’ll get other cool bits-and-bobs which no one else will get.

why so serious?

Also, even if you don’t get one of the Jokers, you’ll still be getting a really exclusive t-shirt design, where only 54 will ever be made…

So yeah! I think it’s a pretty nifty idea :)

What do you guys think?

In other news, I got sent this rather lovely drawing of me with a dinosaur AND a robot! BEST COMBO EVER!

Much love,

Johnny <3

A couple of days ago my copies of Chameleon Circuit’s self-titled debut album, and DFTBA Records Volume 1 compilation album arrived :D

They are both so good! I can’t stop listening to them :)

You can download both albums from iTunes and amazon, or you can order a physical copy from dftba.com.

I took a picture of myself with the albums for dailybooth. Then, I was in Alan’s blogtv show when Alex saw the dailybooth picture, and he said something along the lines of “aww, look how happy Johnny looks with his CDs… oh wait, he’s not actually smiling, that’s just his normal face” … and then I felt REALLY bad for not smiling in the picture, because I genuinely WAS excited and happy to receive them! So, here… I’ve edited the dailybooth picture a little to better represent how I was really feeling :P

* * * * * * *

Yesterday Jazza and I went to a lecture given by Johnny Cupcakes at Leeds college of art and design. It was really interesting and I got a lot of great tips/ideas for things I’d like to encorporate into my own t-shirt business. Johnny talked about how he started up his business and how he grew it from selling t-shirts out of the trunk of his car, to now owning a multi-million dollar company with retail stores, and a website which brings in thousands of dollars worth of orders every single day. He spoke about growing a brands reputation, taking risks, paying attention to the small details, and so on. It was quite cool seeing pictures from when he started his business where he was running it from his mom’s loft. There were boxes all over the place (which is what my room looks like right now) and I noticed he was printing his designs onto Gildan Activewear, which is what I’m doing too. So yeah, I really enjoyed his whole lecture.

Oh, and Johnny had hid a little package under everyone’s seats before the lecture which he announced half way through… so we all looked under our seats and there was a little bag with a pin badge, a sweet, and a little business card for everyone! I thought that was such a cool idea. Everyone loves free-bees. He also gave us a voucher for getting 20% off any order we place on his website in the next week ^_^

At the lecture Jazza and I met a lovely fellow called Luke, who goes by the username lukeb3000 on youtube. Luke got in contact with me a few days before the lecture, and sent me a map of where we could park and such… and then when we arrived in Leeds, we had to ring him several times while he helped direct us to the lecture hall… we’d never have found it on time without Luke’s help… so if you’re reading this, then THANK YOU LUKE! :D

In other news, I recorded a video today talking about my trip to Helsinki, and talking about my new t-shirt designs, but after editing it the video came out at 4 minutes long. I haven’t posted a long vlog like this in ages, and I’m a little worried about posting it because I don’t know if anyone will really find it interesting at all. Most of my videos recently have been short, heavily edited videos like my 7seconds one, or my urban dictionary meme, so I feel a little out of my element posting more of a raw “vlog” like this … I’ll probably still post it later today though :)

Also, Conor is coming over again later today and we’re going to watch Shaun of the Dead, so I’m excited about that :D

Much love,

Johnny <3

Yay! So, the new t-shirts arrived a lot sooner than I expected! :D

They are all now available to buy from johnnydurhamclothing.com

Here’s some pictures of them…

I’m really pleased with how they turned out. The print quality is excellent.

They arrived at around 9.30 this morning. I got woken up by a phone call from my building’s reception saying I had some packages I had to go and sign for. I dragged myself out of bed, went down to reception, signed for the delivery, and then spent the next half hour going up and down three flights of stairs with what felt like a million boxes (where in reality there were only 8). Still though, my room is now completely full with boxes of t-shirts… there’s hardly any room to move around xD.

I’m going to make a video tomorrow to let people know about the new designs going on sale, but I wanted to announce it here first on my blog. Hopefully lots of people will like them enough to buy one. It’s quite scary paying lots of money up front for a bunch of t-shirts, when you’re not completely sure if anyone will even want to buy them… so *fingers crossed* :)

johnnydurhamclothing.com

In other news, I’m going to a lecture given by Johnny Cupcakes about entrepreneurial skills, building a brand’s reputation, and stuff like that. There’s going to be free cupcakes there too! ^_^

I’ve been a huge fan of Johnny Cupcakes for a while now. He’s one of my inspirations for starting up my own t-shirt venture. I think I’ve been doing okay so far by myself, but I thought it’d be cool to go to this lecture and perhaps get a few new ideas on stuff. It’ll also be pretty sweet if I get a chance to meet and talk to Johnny.

If you’re in the area tomorrow night, then definitely stop by too. I’m dragging Jazza along with me from sheffield already xD

Johnny <3

YAY! So, there are 3 new t-shirt designs on the way for johnnydurhamclothing.com :D

I’m hoping they’ll be available from this coming weekend, although it might end up being next week sometime. Either way, they’re coming pretty soon :)

I’m really excited about these new designs! ^_^

DESIGN 1

At first glance it might just look like a random white pattern on a black t-shirt, but upon closer inspection you’ll notice the white print actually has letters in it. Those letters form words which say the following:

hello there
how are you?
i hope you are doing well
if you are managing to read this then you are amazing
and i love you more than anything else in the world…. :)

I thought it was a cool idea to have a pattern on a t-shirt which will intrigue people and make them want to come up closer to you, just to try and figure out what the pattern says… and once they do manage to read it, it’ll make them smile because you’ve just told them that you love them! :D

This t-shirt is also a little simlar to the very first t-shirt I sold, so hopefully people who missed out on buying one of those, can get one of these instead? :)

DESIGN 2

This is one of my favourite tees! It’s based on a robot designed by the lovely Ben. The robot’s name is Robbie. He is the cutest robot in the history of the world, and he loves you. I hope you love him back :P

DESIGN 3

As a lot of you will know, I LOVE DINOSAURS! :D

…and dinosaurs go RAWR!

That’s why I made this t-shirt. It gives voice to your inner-dinosaur… or something xD

Hopefully if you like dinosaurs too, then you’ll like this t-shirt!

Oh, and here’s a cute image Vee made for me a while back. It’s me hugging a dinosaur ^_^

So, to go along with the 3 new t-shirt designs, there are more promotional badges to give away for FREE with every order, as well as the business cards which I’ve been signing and sending out with all orders :)

The new set of badges will look like this:

Again, you’ll be able to buy a pack of all 4 badges, or you can just get one of the badges at random for FREE (included with your order).

As soon as the t-shirts go on sale, I’ll post a blog about it here, and update my twitter. I’ll also be making a video to promote them too :)

I like the idea of having some of my designs as a limited edition, so at least one of these three designs will be exclusive. I haven’t decided which one yet though. I’m thinking I might make both designs 1 and 3 limited editions. What do you guys think?

Also, more generally, do you guys like the designs? Might you buy one of them? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know ^_^

I’d greatly appreciate any feedback <3

Much love,

Johnny <3