My second cafepress shop...

I can now proudly state that I have a second Cafepress shop. There are two reasons for having more than just the Tees for Grads shop. Firstly graduation is very much a seasonal market (people only graduate and specific times of year) and so I couldn't expect to do a roaring trade all year around. Secondly if you have two shops which are equally good then you should have more chance of selling stuff.

My new category is something that doesnt go in and out of fashion and is predominantly an all year thing...chess! Chess also has quite a faithful following around the world and has been around for much longer than Cafepress and will be here for many more years to come.

I have a look at some of the other chess T-shirt designs both on Cafepress and on the net generally and I wasn't particularly impressed. Mostly quite cluttered designs featuring the whole chessboard and too many pieces. I decided (as usual) to keep my designs simple and straightforward. I brain stormed slogans for a while before coming up with a few different ones which I actually used:

• Chess the sport of kings (fairly obvious one but one that I felt was at least safe).
• En passant...its not a made up rule! (one of the last chess rules that is learned and knowing it tends to show some degree of seriousness about chess).
• Its mating season! (although many people refer to it as 'check mate' the pros generally refer to it simply as 'mate' and discuss 'mating' and 'mating positions' so I hoped this would appeal to some of the more cheeky players out there!
• Chess...its a queen's world! (a take on its a man's world for women players).
• I can mate with a knight and bishop! (one of the most difficult end games when you have only the knight (horse) and bishop with which to win.

I've filled in the tags for the images I created (so people can search for them within Cafepress itself) as well as the titles/descriptions and store details.

Tomorrow I will be collating some beginner's chess notes I have previously written into an article and submitting it to online publishers as before.

If you would like to see my Chess Gifts shop you can do so here.