Flamingo Lounge Cash Set Design (1 Viewer)

So, lots to digest here...hahaha.

  • A new quarter to make the 1/2/3/4 feel more natural and not as out of sorts
  • Two options for the 1 dollar chip (one of them at the arm-twisting of @SeanGecko ;))
  • A 5 that I actually like quite a bit
  • A slight change to make the spots thicker on the 20
  • Finally, a blurple 500 in case I go full Team Black Dollar....
Whew....I need a nap :LOL: :laugh:

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So I believe I have finally landed at using the black 1 and the yellow 5 as the primaries that will be ordered with the big set, while the blue 1 and red 5 will be the secondaries. It feels like the best progression of color, styles, spots, etc.

It's crazy how much momentum a design can get sometimes once everything feels like it clicks...
 
If you will make these chips in Tina, what mold do you plan to use for them?
 
If you’re happy with the design… skip these comments.

The stars at the end of line one and the beginning of line three throw me.

The denom all by itself on the left over white seems like it needs something to balance the flamingo and bars- which are lovely.
 
After everything up to this point, I am really proud of the evolution of the inlay design so far. I was looking at the chip set as a whole over the weekend and I liked it a lot but it felt like it was missing something. It's about to get a little deep here and I apologize in advance...

I realized after a moment or two that the chips all looked great but that they were missing the personal element. I've been so deep into looking at spot pattern matching and progression and color overlap and combinations that I've been unable to see the forest for the trees.

The main reason I started down this road was to have a set to play with both poker crew and family and the family part felt like it wasn't there. I am struggling to find the right way to say it but it all felt cold and impersonal to a degree.

When I'm playing with my family, I want to be able to tell them which chips were inspired by them and how. When my poker crew is playing, I want to be able to tell them stories about the people that mean the most to me and that I am the most proud of.

So I went back down to bare bones on a lot of these chips and came up somewhere that feels like good looking chips that also represent a lot of me as a person and my family as a whole.

I'll be sharing the new chips, one post at a time in the next short while, while also laying out some of my reasoning behind the choices I've made, ending up with the posting of the full set together.

Thanks again to everyone here for all of the help, feedback, messages and suggestions. They all helped get me to this point and to something I feel pretty proud of.

I also apologize in advance if this feels too self-indulgent or too personal for a chip forum post, but since it's important to me I thought it might be worth sharing it all here, where I have made so many new friends in such a short time.

Alright, time for some chip designs!! :LOL: :laugh:
 
Starting with the chip that has had the least amount of change for the longest period of time, we have the nickel.

Green is my wife's favorite color, specifically the type of light, mint ice cream type of green that makes up the body of this chip. This one has been a standard in a lot of mockups in the last few months and is pretty much the lone full holdover...

Flamingo Personal Nickel.png
 
Next up is the quarter, which has always had a pink element to it, but hasn't had a ton of flamingo-ness....shall we say?

The flamingo was a big part of my life growing up in a small suburban part of Winnipeg that kind of gets a bad rap from the rest of the city, deserved or otherwise. My mom has always loved flamingos and it ended up funny that everyone else did too.

The flamingo was akin to an unofficial town mascot and tons of people had them on their lawns. The flamingo was even featured as part of the little street carnival in our area of town in early summer that was maybe a block long with rides and games and the works. It may have been small, but it felt like it was practically Disneyland for a six year old out at 10pm eating cotton candy on a ferris wheel....:LOL: :laugh:

By going with a couple of different shades of the pink and adding the black stripe, this one feels like it has a lot more flamingo-ness now...

Flamingo Personal Quarter.png
 
Moving on to my dollar, this one takes equal parts inspiration from new buddy @SeanGecko and my current home of Riverside.

Riverside has long been considered as one of the citrus capitals of California and even as the orchards have gone away for the most part, there are still a ton of orange trees around town. My wife and I love driving around at night with the windows down when the orange trees are blossoming and just smell the flowers in the air.

Since moving to our new home in the summer of 2023, we also planted orange, lemon and lime trees in our backyard to have the same experience without the hassle of the drive. Hence we now have a black dollar with orange, lemon and lime spots...

Flamingo Personal Dollar.png
 
Things for the $5 and the $20 are going to get a little heavy for a bit. My dad taught me how to play cards and taught me how to play poker. He was a massive part of forming the person I am and when he passed away in late-2020, it has left a huge hole that I still struggle with from time to time.

Much like I remember being the little kid eating way too many snacks and riding way too many rides at a summer fair, I remember spending so much time with my dad at various sporting events around Winnipeg. The Jets and the Blue Bombers were cornerstones of my childhood and my dad and I would spend hours watching games together, replaying games and plays in the backyard, talking about them endlessly.

One of my favorite memories of my dad is of me having to go to bed for school and miss watching a Jets playoff game in another time zone. He compromised with my mom and gave me his little handheld transistor radio that had one earbud headphone so I could listen to the game as I drifted off to sleep.

That version of the Jets left in 1996 but my dad was just as big a fan of the new version of the team that came back to Winnipeg in 2011. The Jets recently introduced new alternate sweaters, based on the Royal Canadian Air Force....

winnipeg-jets-rcaf-jersey-feat-sportslogosnet-90590-23-24.jpg


To be able to tell stories around the poker table like the transistor radio story and to express my love of the Jets as well, I put this together for my five dollar chip..

Flamingo Personal Five.png
 
Same type of story with the $20 chip, me and my dad in the backyard on a summer weekend working on some type of house project with a Blue Bomber game on the radio. Sitting with him in the upper deck at the old Winnipeg Stadium and feeling it SHAKE from people stomping their feet and banging their hands on the aluminium bleacher seats, the sound traveling around the stadium like the wave but with noise.

The Bombers lost their way logo-wise for a decade or two with weird navy colors and mustard looking golds, but the Bombers I grew up with and the Bombers I love now look like this, with gold and a bright royalish blue....

Screenshot_20240225_150056_Opera Mini.jpg


With all of that in mind, this is what I put together for my new $20 chip...

Flamingo Personal Twenty.png
 
The 100 and the 500 are inspired by my two boys and their favorite colors. I call them boys and they'll always be my boys, but they're 22 and 19 now and as the cliche goes the time has gone by in a flash. They've both had challenges they've had to overcome and have grown from the littles squeezing dad's hand in the grocery store and playing hours and hours (and did I mention hours...haha) of catch in the yard into strong, caring, ambitious young men that I am so incredibly proud of.

The 100 is my oldest's favorite colors. He says it isn't because of the LA Kings and that he just likes them, but I think it's probably a little of both and that's a-ok with me...

Flamingo Personal Hundred.png


The 500 is my youngest's favorites, anything purple to start with and bright to follow. He was in my mind with the most recent iteration of the 20 and a lot of the same color elements are there, along with some new twists...

Flamingo Personal Five Hundred.png
 
Finally, here is the whole set together. My life and everything important to me, boiled down in a set of poker chips that I'll hopefully get to enjoy for a long time to come.

Flamingo Variant Personal.png


I hope I haven't bored you all to tears with this wall of text and I appreciate having a place to be able to share all of this...
 
Finally, here is the whole set together. My life and everything important to me, boiled down in a set of poker chips that I'll hopefully get to enjoy for a long time to come.

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I hope I haven't bored you all to tears with this wall of text and I appreciate having a place to be able to share all of this...
Best reason I've seen for a poker set.
 
Has anyone printed metallic gold with Tina? I worry how that will turn out.

I love that you found your voice here and built something that sings to you!
 
No joke, when I came up with the idea of the Bomber 20, the first thing I did was find that set in our conversation to see if it was worth going down that road...haha
 
Moving on to my dollar, this one takes equal parts inspiration from new buddy @SeanGecko and my current home of Riverside.

Riverside has long been considered as one of the citrus capitals of California and even as the orchards have gone away for the most part, there are still a ton of orange trees around town. My wife and I love driving around at night with the windows down when the orange trees are blossoming and just smell the flowers in the air.

Since moving to our new home in the summer of 2023, we also planted orange, lemon and lime trees in our backyard to have the same experience without the hassle of the drive. Hence we now have a black dollar with orange, lemon and lime spots...

View attachment 1282115
Love where your set has ended up and I've enjoyed following along on your journey getting here. I also love the stories behind each of your chips. The $1 chip really stands out for me because one of my favorite things about Riverside is catching that wonderful smell of the orange blossoms on my way home from work. Looking forward to seeing your pics of the real thing when you get them made!
 
I took your suggestion and applied it regarding the starbursts and having something behind the denom @warma ....

Me likee...

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Glad you like it! The next step would be taking a fresh look the colors behind the denom. What does that look like across the values? Is it the same 4-bar alternating pattern? A different pattern (e.g., one bar)? Or does is color swatch somehow change (e.g., a circle for the frac, a star for the 5…)?

The one thing to keep in mind is color blindness to make sure the result isn’t a muddle of color. https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/

Just keep in mind, some experiments succeed, and some fail. Jury’s still out on my input. ;)
 
Love where your set has ended up and I've enjoyed following along on your journey getting here. I also love the stories behind each of your chips. The $1 chip really stands out for me because one of my favorite things about Riverside is catching that wonderful smell of the orange blossoms on my way home from work. Looking forward to seeing your pics of the real thing when you get them made!
Right? Our trees were too small and freshly planted to flower much last year, but they should really blossom this year and my wife and I are super excited for it!

It's funny how I moved from growing up in an area that was an often maligned small part of a larger area that is passionately loved by its residents to currently living in.......

.....an often maligned small part of a larger area that is passionately loved by its residents. :LOL: :laugh:
 

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