OT ... Anybody printing T-shirts?

[GPW]

Need to make some T-shirt prints for a friend... Haven’t done this in years , everything’s changed  ... Any help , direction , or sources for supplies would be much appreciated... Thanks ...

Ps. part of the idea of this was to create some Foamie Trailer T-shirts .... just for those special occasions...

[lthomas987]

I have received shirts from customink recently that were quite nice.

[GPW]

LT, I just wanted to make some homemade ones ... Been so long since we printed any , all the old supply companies went out of business...

[lthomas987]

They're are a ton of online companies that will let you upload images and print just one shirt. Share the link with friends or the world and they can each order their own. It is pretty neat

[GPW]

Laura , Thanks !!! ... that may be lots better than setting up a shop to just print a few shirts ... Checked online , and all that stuff is Expensive now (supplies) ... In the old days , we used what we had .... now everything is so specialized... Plus takes money and space away from our Foamie projects ..

[Shar]

I'm picturing you with a t-shirt that says, "There's no place like foam!"

[Jst83]

Zazzle.com

[Corwin C]

I airbrush stencils on custom t-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets for friends and family. I have had excellent results with Jaquard Textile paints for light colored fabric and Jaquard Lumiere for metalics and darker fabric. Not very expensive and both are for painting, stamping, stenciling, airbrushing on natural and synthetic fabrics. Thin with water, soap and water cleanup. I buy red, yellow, blue, black, and white and mix my own tints. They need to be heat set (I use an iron) and have had excellent durability (the fabric wears out before the colors do.)



Not a great picture (both textile and lumiere,) but you get the idea...

[GPW]

Corwin , Thanks !!! I ordered some of their photo screen emulsion , awaiting arrival ... I can get their products locally ... Had no luck with Speedball emulsion , hope to do better with this ...

Those stencils look COOL !!! How do you make them ...??? Just cut them out ?

[Corwin C]

I use plastic coated freezer paper for the stencils. It irons onto the fabric, gives a good line, and removes cleanly. The drawback is that they're generally a one time use. We have made it a regular feature of our Independance Day family get together to take the time to paint shirts for the kids. They get to pick the image they want (stencil clipart from the internet), print to appropriate size, trace onto freezer paper using sliding glass door as a "light box". The older ones cut out their own masks (x-acto knife is generally the tool of choice, but anything that cuts paper works) and the younger ones get help from adults and older siblings or cousins. When everything is all masked off, I fire up the airbrush and go shirt to shirt, change color, shirt to shirt, change color, etc. until everything gets painted, then we have a "reveal" where they each get to pull off the mask in front of everyone and see how it turned out. I've painted 30+ shirts in under an hour, the real work is cutting the stencils and getting everything masked ... a vinyl cutter would be your friend if you're doing mutiples of the same design.

Here's a few more pictures ... some showing the before and after of the "reveal."

[pchast]

beautiful work.

[Shar]

Yes, amazing!

[atahoekid]

Talent like that amazes me. I unfortunately do not have that level of artistic skill. I may have other talents but being artistic is not one of them.