New Prints for a New Year

A few drop-dead gorgeous brand new prints that I have just ordered today - enough for one bag each.

They will be available for use in early January.

Five lovely extra-wide jodo bags shipped out to my dear friends at Mugendo Budogu with whom I consign selected designs.

They offer all kinds of budo supplies, clothing, iaito, books, videos, and more - high quality imports from Japan, they are based here in the USA and offer excellent customer service.

Another Happy Customer!

Samurai Cats custom weapons bag has made somebody very happy - and will provide years of good use!

Japanese imported decorative prints cost more, but a decorative print can individualize your custom weapons bag for as little as $12 on top of the $50 base price for a canvas or twill bag. Add a tanto sleeve and you are looking at $74 + shipping (and sales tax in CA) for an aikido weapons bag made to your specs.

I do long bags for those whose training includes the bo, wide bags for jodo folks, and special designs for folks doing escrima or other arts with many smaller weapons.

Current timeline: Booked through November, but can manage a couple of holiday orders....

Every now and then an absolutely wonderful print presents itself and this Samurai Cats, imported from Japan, fits the bill.

This bag is en route to a bodacious budobabe who will use it well. Next up, a bag for one of my teachers, using one of my all time favorite prints (it decorated one of my own bags some years ago) and then back to an ongoing project to get more consignment bags out to the folks at Mugendo Budogu - they get extra wide bags to meet the needs of jodo folks.

I wonder if there will be a last minute holiday rush again this year?

Cranes

As I get ready to pack up and send the latest custom bag, I wonder why so few people select one of the crane motif prints to decorate their bags. I admit they are my weakness, and especially in the autumn when the skeins of migrating birds cross the sky and even at night one sometimes hears the calls of shorebirds high above (ok, not here, but when we lived in San Francisco...).

That's what prompted this haiku:

A drawer of cranes
Folded flat wave at their kinfolk
Oklahoma-bound

Welcome to the Website...

I am pretty happy with how easily this has come together as a website for Zanshin Art. I'm keeping the main website up for now but may eventually have the url come to here. If you have any specific feedback, email it to me at zanshinart@gmail.com
Meanwhile I am busy in the studio preparing a line of wider bags to meet the needs of jodo folks; these will be consigned to my good friends at Mugendo Budogu - great budo people selling budo gear of all kinds. Here are some of the prints I'll be decorating these bags with:

I'm in the process of building a mirror to my Zanshin Art website here on blogger, so bear with me if there seems to be some info missing. I'll post news here and my Facebook page is also a place to look for information.

These are tiny "weapons bags" meant as gift bags for tanto. Not sure about pricing on them yet, but email me an inquiry if you are going to be presenting somebody a tanto and would like a special package for it! zanshinart@gmail.com

Day of the Dead Prints

Most of the cotton prints I offer for decorating canvas or twill weapons bags are Asian-themed - dragons, koi, cranes, geometrics, bamboo - but every now and then it is fun to offer some bold prints on other themes, and there's a surprising number of folks who do enjoy sporting them on their bags.

Hence, a few Day of the Dead prints...details on ordering at Zanshin Art website.