The Tauntress

Several of us are hosting a SecondLife RL musicians jam here in the Twin Cities in September. RL stands for Real Life, by the way. That means a bunch of us who know each other in a virtual world gather in an actual real life location a couple times of year to make music and laugh and eat and drink and giggle and drink and dork around. It’s a ridiculous amount of fun, primarily because we’ve all gotten to know each other really well and it’s a place where almost everyone feels accepted, just as they are.

Most of the work for creating a jam happens way in advance of the actual date and then the day before. But there are a couple of things that need to happen in the middle and ordering lanyards for jam badges and a banner for the stage are 2 of them. That was my task today since it’s less than a month before the event and I keep forgetting to get my act together.

So off to Vistaprint I went to order a banner. I’d started it a couple weeks before but ran into a snag when the custom image created by our resident artist, Suzen Juel, wasn’t an high enough resolution for the size of banner I was looking to create. After messing around with it for about an hour, I realized that making the banner slightly smaller and adding a generic celebration background would solve the issue. Added some metal grommets and rope and voila! We have a banner for under $70.

Not bad, huh? We needed it to be white so folks can sign the banner before they leave the jam. That’s become a tradition over the years. I still have the sign from our last jam in 2014. Not sure what we’ll do with it but who knows? Maybe we’ll make a jam time capsule at some point.

Then came the lanyards. I’d already done some investigating online and came across a site that looked to have a decent product at a reasonable price. I actually spoke to a rep and that made the difference, I think. They’re supposed to give me a mock up of the lanyard within the next 48 hours so I can approve. I’ve already paid them so I’m a little leary until I actually see something. If it works out, we’re gonna have an awesome souvenir/keepsake for people attending the jam.

T-shirt Inkies by Suzen Juel

Group banner by Suzen Juel

Printing by Suzen Juel

So the lanyards are supposed to be 1″ wide polyester using the images above – first the 7 inkie, then the words, then the 3 inkie, then the words, then the 7 inkie again, etc… They’re going to mock them up on a purple or violet lanyard to see how they look. If it’s ugly, we’ll just make the lanyard white. Keeping my fingers crossed that this company will actually do what they said they are going to do!

Now if I can remember to call the hotel and see about upgrading our booking to a suite…