Happy Tree Friends

Our gutsy heart had the special honor of gracing our friends’ Pollyanna (the tree’s designer and a very talented writer and producer) and Matthew’s (the tree’s photographer, as well as a documentary filmmaker and photog) special succulent Jewish Christmas Tree over the holidays, and we thought their gorgeous photo could also serve as a belated  holiday greeting from us at I Heart Guts. We hope your holidays were smashing and imagine you have some fun plans to ring in the new year. It’s been a busy and fun holiday season for us, but I’m also glad the hustle and bustle is over so I can concentrate on making newgutsy stuff. Woo hoo!

Tees on Sale!

You know, I’ve always thought of our all guts tee as being sort of problematic because I forgot to include the gallbladder in the original drawing. But, as one of our customers pointed out recently, it’s actually the perfect shirt for someone who’s had a gallbladder removed since it’s missing the gallbladder. So the body parts better reflect the wearer. Anyway, this is a long way of saying, we’ve just put a bunch of our tees in clearance to make room for fun new designs coming in 2009. Get a deal on the Big Bloody Heart tee, the aforementioned All Guts tees in black or apricot, and the good ol’ Iron Lung shirt. Snap ’em up while they last!

More From Unique L.A.

Things were so fun around the show, I forgot to tell you about the fun we had in our booth! One woman, an M.D., was checking out the glands and remarked of the testicle, “He looks like he has kind of an epidydimis combover.” Hilarious. A midwife-in-training popped by our booth to get some Womb Service tees, and her friend said, all of a sudden, “I have two uteruses. And two cervixes!” So we spent the next five minutes wondering if she could have two pregnancies and two different times, what about two periods? Fascinating. Can you imagine? It turns out that , yes you can have two separate pregnancies in two uteruses. I also got a chance to meet Katrina, who blogs about tees on T-shirts Around the Internet, she was super nice, and it was great to meet her in person!

Good Things In L.A.

We had a good ol’ time at the first annual Unique Los Angeles design and gift event downtown, tons of great and talented local vendors came out to show off their wares, and intrepid (or maybe desperate?) shoppers eschewed The Grove and Target in favor of locally made art, goodies and stuff.

There were more than a few anatomy-related items at Unique, here’s a sampling of my favorites — a body painted on a rolling wooden platform by the good people at Bughouse (they make amazing prints, are obsessed with pills, and are nice people to boot), left. Our next door neighbor at the show, Knicker Rocker, makes darned cute underpants, including these pelvic bone ones, above center. Two Rabbits Studios makes gorgeous silkscreened band posters, like this Tegan & Sara heart and fetus one, above right.

Stella Neptune picks out vintage finds and silkscreens wonderful things on them, everything from oversized ants to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger to this “Liquor, Sugar, Dialysis” tee, left. The Poster List makes too many good things to mention, so just go peep their website, and enjoy the heavy heart, above center. Poketo always makes good things, but we especially loved this exploding head with flying brains. And I can’t neglect to mention Porterness, which, among other good things, made a great little card — “Every time I think of you, a little pee comes out.” Amazing stuff, it was a great show and hats off to Sonja Rasula who pulled it all off.

Tasty Treats

One of our customers in Denver had a party for a friend who just graduated from nursing school, and look what cool gutsy cupcake toppers she crafted from marzipan! First of all, we are totally honored to see the guts immortalized in cupcake form. We only wish we could have seen theses colorful cupcakes pass through the digestive system — well, up until a point, I guess. Look! — she even stamped our silly little button slogans into each one! We are so impressed by her craftiness. Thanks, Rebecca B., for making such fabulous edible sculptures and for being such a great friend to your friends! You rock.

Recycled Parts

We are what we eat,  says Kathleen Gaudet, an artist we met at Felt Club who really likes guts. Take a look at her cool collages of internal organs fashioned from recycled food packaging.

Last Chance Holiday Shoppin’

We had heaps of fun at last weekend’s Bust Craftacular in Echo Park, lots of folks came out and although the show was on the small side, the number of quality vendors selling cool stuff (Cut + Paste, Seattle Show Posters and Bored, Inc. were a couple of our faves) made it a perfect place to snap up strange and handmade gifts for the holidays. Our fave moments: one small girl came up to our booth, looked around at all the plush, and final made her verdict: “Ewwwwww!” The bouncer working the show (would he need to throw out rowdy knitters?) stopped by our booth, all cool, tattooed and gigantic, took a look at the uterus “Womb Service” shirt and started cracking up. “I might need to get that,” he chuckled.  Another pair of little girls spent a long time asking about every single sticker. Our conversation went something like this:

girl: “What’s that?”
me: “It’s a thymus”

girl: “What’s this?”
me: “It’s a spleen”

girl: “What’s that?”
me: “Hypothalamus.”

Fun! We have one last holiday show, one last chance to grab great, locally crafted goods at Unique Los Angeles next weekend, Dec 13-14! Please stop by and visit, and whatever you do, don’t go to the mall when you can get everything you need at Unique.

Fun New Stuff!

Check out some new gutsy goodies just for you — the Digestive System Lunchbox! There’s only two one of these left, so grab it while you can.We’ve also combined some select guts and glands to create specialty sticker packs — the Digestive System Sticker Set (yummy!) and Reproductive System Sticker Set (sexxxy!). Just in case you’ve forgotten how the digestive system works or how the reproductive system works (really, now, who could forget that?), these stickers will help you along. Sex organs are not included, you have to supply those yourself.

Carat Club

We’d like to introduce you to some new friends of ours, a group of precious gems — called Carat Club — that will debut at Gallery Hanahou‘s annual Luvable Hugable show in New York City. I handmade these special new plush friends for my husband, who’s a geologist and therefore thinks of gems as boring old piles of carbon. Hopefully I’ll make stickers of these someday soon. They love to rock, so if you’re in New York, please go visit them and give ’em a squeeze. Some handmade I Heart Guts plushies and our handcrafted Frankenfoods will be on display and Monkeyhouse Toys in Silverlake, check out the opening in LA this weekend!

Twin Team

How would you like to share your liver with a sibling? One half of the cojoined twin team born in the United Kingdom passed away after an effort to separate the two. The remaining baby, Faith, is in stable condition, and I imagine the mom, who’s just 18, is pretty fried after the whole ordeal.