Store

The Official Aubergine Chef Store

Thanks to all the support from my family, friends, and fans I’ve decided that it might be a good idea to open up an online store through zazzle.com!  There you can buy all kinds of different things including shirts, iPhone cases, magnets, aprons, mugs, and even portable speakers for your MP3 player.  I’ll be adding new stuff all the time so be sure to check back!  Below is a video on how to get the most out of my online store or you can read the text version below the video.

If you’re ready to go to the store just click here!

Video

Designing Apparel

Zazzle is great because you can pretty much create any shirt you can dream up.  They have t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, tank tops, and even toddler and baby clothing.  The system is pretty user friendly but I do want to point out that white on light colored garments turns transparent.  So for example, the Aubergine Chef logo’s little chef’s eyes will turn yellow if you change the shirt to yellow.  This isn’t a huge deal but you should be aware of that.  If you want a dark colored shirt like black, navy, forest green, or brown some designs have a separate design that’s more compatible for dark colored shirts – that’s because white does show up on dark colored shirts.  So when browsing the store look

for both light and dark versions of the same design.

Speaking of colors, there are a bunch of different colors you can pick from for the shirt.  Just because I designed the shirt in yellow doesn’t mean you have to pick yellow – you can easily pick baby blue.  Just be aware that some colors like yellow, green, and mint tint the whole design slightly.  I already checked with customer service and they told me it’s basically what you see is what you get.

 

Changing Between Styles

Everything on zazzle.com is customizable so you have the flexibility to create the shirt exactly as you want it.  This means that you can pick a design that I made using a men’s shirt and you can change it into a women’s shirt.  You can also change the size of the design and add text if you want to.  To customize the shirt be sure to click the orange “Customize It” button below the preview of the item.  Even though you can change any design into any shirt I wanted the store to have a browsing feel to it so I made the same design on several different shirts – for example the Aubergine Chef logo is on every single style of shirt. 

Designing Magnets, Buttons, iPhone cases, Speakers, and the like
Unlike shirts these items tend to have bleed.  This means that you want the background image or color to extend all the way to the edge so that there isn’t a funky white border.  Because these items have bleed it is important to point out that the area to design in is bigger than the safe area.  The safe area is shown by a red border but it only shows up after you click customize it.  The safe area is the space on the design that is guaranteed to be printed on the final design.  Areas outside of the safe area may get cut off.  However, because of bleed you want the color or background image to go outside of the safe area.  So for example: If you have text you want to make sure all the letters are in the safe area.  If you use the vanilla cake as a background you want to make sure it goes past the safe area so it has a nice professional look when printed.  That being said the items I designed are guaranteed to already be in the safe area however if you switch between shapes it may affect the safe area.  The only time this is really a problem is on the magnets and buttons when you switch from a square to a round style – since the round style is smaller than a square sometimes the safe area moves closer to the design.  So basically always double check by clicking customize it before buying a button or magnet.

Solid Colors

On most of the buttons, magnets, cases, and speakers I designed they have a picture background of one of the baked goods from the show – however I left some with a solid background.  To change the background color click customize it, then right under “add images” you’ll see a little drop down menu “edit”.  Click background and choose the color you’d like.

Have fun with my store and thank you so much for your support!

Products
As I purchase products for myself I will post them on here so you can see how they look!  I know that one of the biggest issues with purchasing online is wondering how the fit will be.  As a smaller guy (I’m only 5’6″) I have a tough time finding shirts that actually fit me well.  I’ll try my best to better describe each individual item here along with a video!

Basic American Apparel T-Shirt in Light Blue
I typically like my clothes to be a little tighter and this shirt has a nice fit.  The sleeves meet about halfway down my upper arm (bicep?) and the shirt ends right below my hip before my thigh.  I’m wearing the small size in the picture.  The fabric feels really soft and smooth and fairly lightweight for a t-shirt material.

Performance Micro-Fiber T-Shirt in White
I’ve never really owned a t-shirt specific to wearing to the gym – usually I just pick out a shirt I like to wear and make that my gym shirt.  This shirt is really lightweight and breezy – and by breezy I mean as you walk you can really feel a breeze right through the shirt!  It’s a little bit looser than the American Apparel T-shirt and I got this in a small as well.

Large Logo on Budget Tote in Natural and Navy
This is a pretty handy little bag.  It’s thin so you can fold it up pretty tightly and put it anywhere, but it’s also pretty sturdy!  It’s also pretty deep.  It doesn’t stretch out too wide so you probably can’t use it for a ton of groceries but it would be great for a short trip.  I like that it’s 100% cotton so you can just throw it in the wash if it ever gets dirty.

Product Videos

Basic American Apparel Shirt, Micro-Fiber T-shirt, and Budget Tote