Society6

It was Ric's birthday recently and, as part of his present, I ordered him a print from the U.S based online shop, Society6.

I discovered this awesome shop when I was looking at one of my favourite blogs, Hard-boiled Wonderland, and I saw that the girlfriend-blogger had bought her boyfriend (who guest appears in the blog) a Royal Tenenbaums t-shirt created by Nan Lawson, entitled "Secretly in Love". I, in turn, fell explicitly no-holds-barred in love with the t-shirt and set about surfing the net to try and find its distributor. The search eventually led me to Society6's website. 

They have such cool art there, and although it is mass-produced and commercialised, you can pretty much have any print made into any picture, t-shirt, pillow or tote bag that you want. It's also an amazing source of inspiration, if you're into creating your own pieces of art.

I ordered myself the t-shirt and Ric a (*cringe*) Halo print (you'll know what this is if you play games or, worse, if your significant other plays games...Ric and I actually have house-rules in place for this). The print will go into an inconspicuous area of the house that only he makes use of.  

The goods aren't badly priced but of course the postage costs cause the end price to spike. 

The parcels finally arrived about a week ago (so you're looking at about three weeks' delivery time) and I joyfully made my way to the post office to collect them...only to be informed that I had to pay customs duty on the t-shirt and print as well. Least to say that, while I LOVE my t-shirt, the total price I ended up paying for it turned out to be pretty steep (and totally messed up my monthly budget!) 

I do, however, think that the prices of the art prints are really reasonable and the postage costs and customs duty on the prints tend to be quite a lot lower. If you simply order the prints and have them framed over here then it's a great deal.

I mean who doesn't want an old-school, gentlemanly Chewbacca staring at you 24/7. I don't even watch Star Wars and I went ape-shit for this print!