Sumo Cat Menko and Pins - by Lynn Chang

Several months ago artist Lynn Chang reached out to me to see if I could help her with designs for her sumo cat pin collection.  Click here for the review.  She ended up producing pins and the card backs after getting enough commitment on Indiegogo. She sent me some of the pins and I was definitely impressed by what she ended up coming up with.  The backs of the pins even have her name engraved on them and as a bonus she initialed in gold ink all the menko cards too.  Cool touch!  Thanks to all the fellow supports that contributed and helped Lynn reach her goal.  I really appreciate and enjoy independent artists and am glad that this project turned out great.  I hope to see more of Lynn's work in the future!

Sumo Cat Pins and Menko - Autographed by the artist!

 A month or so ago, Lynn Chang reached out to me with an awesome idea that she needed some help on.  Since I am definitely not a creative nor crafty person, I was more than happy to help since I admire people who are and can turn ideas into reality.  Lynn's idea is to create sumo pins (see above) with the packaging for the pins as menko (see below).  I threw around some ideas, she threw some back and she is now live with her Indiegogo Campaign to raise the initial funds for production.  Click here to check it out.  The artwork for the menko is all handrawn and each menko will be die-cut.  Even better, all the pins/menko sold during the campaign will have special, gold-signed menko by none other than Lynn herself.  All pins/menko sold after the campaign will be black-inked signed menko.

Right now there are 3 pins/menko with future ones arriving later.  The current checklist is:

YokoNekoZuna FutabaNyaMa
YokoNekoZuna TaiKawaiHo
YokoNekoZuna ChiyoNyaFuji

For those that understand Japanese, you'll get the cute cat references.  Looking at the drawings of each sumo cat, Lynn has definite talent.  She incorporated some traditional menko design features on the back of her menko such as rank, shikona, and rock-scissors-paper symbol (in the shape of a cat's paw).  Her pins are hand-designed pieces of art and done in enamel.  Lynn really created the whole package here.

Raz over at the Raz Card Blog pointed me to Art-O-Mat machines last year and I have been hooked on this type of art ever since.  It is fun, unique, and high quality.

I hope you'll take a look and consider buying 1 or more of the pins/menko from Lynn so we can get more of them in the future!