Grey and Slate blog
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Fifty years of the Z80
The Z80 is 50 this July (2026). My history briefly crossed with this chip when I was young. But now it’s a popular design of mine.
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Past month review and new store
In this post I review some top products, talk about a customer request, and tell more on my other new store.
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Ideas always welcome
Not all design ideas are mine. One source is direct requests. Do you have a chip, board, or component you’d like to see hand-illustrated on a shirt?
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New marketplace for us
There’s a new marketplace for makers and hackers called SmallRun. SmallRun exists to give independent makers a place to sell what they build with their hands. We believe small run goods carry something commercially manufactured items can’t – the hours of practice, the decisions made at the bench, the craft refined over years. Our job…
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The five stages of running an Etsy store
I mentioned a few weeks ago I hit two big milestones – 300 active listings and my store’s 1-year anniversary. No, I did not expect something to miraculously change, appear, or what. Yeah, while I hit a big set of milestones, I just went back to work, honoring the process that has allowed me to…
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Roundup of top designs – but now as mugs!
I’ve been doing a wee monthly roundup of my most popular designs (last two February and March). This month is slightly different. One of the rules of thumb when building an Etsy store is to stick to a single product type, say, in my case, shirts, or tightly related types, say, shirts and hoodies. Then…
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Two big milestones – Boom! Boom!
Retail is a demanding business. For me, among many things, I have the “Feed me, Seymour” drive for new designs, an Etsy store that needs regular attention, and constant promotion for traffic. To keep me going, I have been keeping an eye on some milestones, two of which have just been passed. Milestone 1: Number…
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Most popular designs of March 2026
OK. So last month I talked about the most popular designs of February. I liked the post so much, decided to do it again this month (and let’s see if I can continue it). This past month, there was some movement in the rankings, and, again, some that surprised me. SID month – againMy designs…
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Whence creativity?
I have experience in media-driven businesses: I ran a corporate blog for a global juggernaut, was a writer for magazines and websites, and have always been adjacent to marketing types who like to tap into my writing and video expertise. Therefore, I went into Grey and Slate with full awareness of the hunger the business…
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Most popular designs of February 2026
I was checking out the stats from the shop to see what were the most popular shirts in the store. As in January, most of the top shirts had a hand-drawn element to them. Tho the line up this month was slightly different from January. I think part of this was due to an ad…
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