We recently put up One Thousand Shirts new tee for you all to check out, which I really enjoy. It’s got the right level of unique but still looking cool. I also a while back reviewed one of their tees which you can check out here. Anyway the guys behind One Thousand Shirts sent me some behind the scenes snaps of their print run so I thought I’d pop it up so you guys and gals can see a bit more of what goes into T-Shirt printing, which I’m sure a lot of you already know a fair bit about! Check out the pictures and if you ever want to have a chat with them pop over to their Facebook page!

The ‘how to’ that you’ll find over at Project 22 is pretty simple (TL;DR buy rivets, attach to plain t-shirt, done) but the idea is very cool and it’s not something that I’d thought would really be possible on a non-industrial scale.

In this video I’m going to show you how to make a new style of your old unused Shirts.

more videos are coming soon
Music from http://www.ende.tv

Andy: Fun to get a bit of different content from the norm, thanks for the submission!

This is a bit of an odd review and will be split into two sections I was receiving a tee from Wildcard Clothing (Hipster Hate Tee) and also received one at the same time from Territorial Clothing (who’s range you can purchase from Wildcard Clothing). Tee Inception! Anyway I’ll start first with the Hipster Hate Tee from Wildcard Clothing which I received.

It certainly took me back because I had no idea what I was receiving so was slightly hesitant, however upon opening the package I noticed a bright blue almost tie dyed shirt (it’s not actually tie die it’s an Acid Wash which I will explain further), with a really well printed HATE design on it. While this design isn’t something I’d usually wear I could really appreciate the effort that had gone into it, I’m not really a huge fan of the fact that it says HATE all over the tee but the actual design of it impresses me that I enjoy wearing it.

The first thing you will see though is the tie dye effect, now I mentioned before that this was created using an acid wash. It’s pretty retro I think started in the 80′s in the jeans market. Essentially what they have done is take a blue tee and used chemicals to remove colours from sections of the tee, which in turn makes every tee unique (who doesn’t love unique clothes?!), my guess would be that they’ve used some form of bleach to create this effect as in prior years I’ve managed to do the same to a lot of my clothes when bleaching my hair (woops). They’ve then screen printed over the top of the tee and the result is pretty nice, it gives a very home made feel to the design which some of you may love and some of you may hate. I found myself quite liking this design even though I thought I wouldn’t, it’s so different and a bit crazy from the tees I usually wear so it was quite a breath of fresh air. Even though the tee itself looks a bit home made the printing upon it is excellent. I can’t fault it or the design apart form my initial dislike of the word hate, perhaps they can make a love version in the future?

So if you’re into a quirky and unique tee definitely give this one a purchase. Considering it’s hand finished design it’s pretty reasonably priced at £18.00 and if you just like the design and not hippy enough they also do a non acid wash version for £10! Which is a steal –  so you really have no excuse. I certainly know that if I ever need to bleach my hair again I can wear this one.

And on to the tee that I was originally being sent by Territorial Clothing! I really like this tee, I usually don’t like or go for typography t-shirts but I love the message and it’s clear they’ve put a lot of thought into it and picked their lettering accordingly.

‘Family is always sacred territory’ is something that I’m sure everyone can relate too, so I particularly enjoyed the message and in general everything about it. The border to the design also gives me the impression of lions hair which further reflects the territorial aspect. The changing of the font and style throughout the message is awesome as if it were all one style I’d feel a bit cheated and it’s cool because it reflects the different members of peoples family in a way, or perhaps I’m reading far too much into it!

The actual T-shirt is Gildan which while isn’t the best – certainly isn’t something that should deter anyone from making a purchase. They’re a well made budget tee. These guys give off an air of professionalism that I’d expect from well established brands, so for them to be pushing out these kinds of designs is quite impressive, just hoping that in the future they might be able to bring out some American Apparel tees – I have, like most people, a love affair with them!

You can get the Hipster Hate Tee from Wildcard Clothing, and also get the Sacred Territory tee from both Wildcard Clothing and Territorial Clothing.

I have one of those fancy plastic t-shirt folding boards (that’s right, fancy plastic) and find it really useful for getting my tees all the same shape and size so I can stack them on my dresser (when you have as many as I do storage become an issue), but you can quickly and easily make one yourself that will do the same job using some sturdy cardboard and duct tape, and probably last a while too.

Shirt Folding Board from Cardboard and Duct Tape

Two weeks ago a new Crew Sweatie was released with help from Regular Printing, so I wanted to share a behind the scenes look at their shop process.

Heather blue crew is a perfect color for a tonal printing, so we mixed up a water based ink color to match the shirt, then got ready for the Regular Printing magic!

You wanna check out a short Video Of The Printing?

The studio is one of the cleanest I’ve seen and perfect for a master at work.

Scott and Shamsy are using a manual press so everything is hands on here!

Perfect placement and alignment is key when the sweatie is put on the pallet.

The water based ink is so soft compared to a plastisol print, that is why I use water based inks all the time… Especially for this super soft crew sweatshirt!

Each sweatie runs thru the dryer to cure the ink, then collected and folded up.

The limited run of 24 are complete, so extra ink is collected to clean the screens.

Then each sweatie gets a custom neck label sewn in by hand.

The little details like a embroidered sleeve applique make it perfect…

When it’s been cut to ribbons.

[via Piccsy]

Screen printing is not an easy job, there’s no denying that, but even I have thought it would be pretty fun to print my own tees, and I’m a guy that already has more than 300 of them (and I’ve stopped accepting samples, they all go to the other bloggers now). It seems that Print Liberation have felt that attraction too, a few years back they released a book about DIY screen printing, and now they’ve gone a step further by launching diyprintshop.com, a site dedicated to helping your ideas printed and out in the world.

Imagine you’re new to the industry and want to get your feet wet in the world of printing, maybe doing a few tees for your friends, or printing some posters you’ve designed, a kit that has everything in it from a company that you know makes cool shirts (that were good quality, if my trip to their shop in Philly back in ’09 is a fair representation, if not particularly up to date) would be a pretty appealing situation. You give them $250, they send to a box with everything in it and you’d be good to go. Well, apart from the actual t-shirts, but I guess that wholesaling blank tees isn’t a business they want to get into.

What do you think guys, seems pretty cool to me, any printers out there want to drop in their 2 cents in the comments?

An inspiring night requires an inspiring shirt design… The theme of this year’s Vinyl Thoughts event was Next Level. A retro video game tribute, so I had to create a shirt using one of my favorite games growing up, the classic Donkey Kong! With the help of Alexa Machine this shirt printing went perfect.

To line up a four color print on the press, you gotta tape one of the films to the pallet in the same spot you want all the prints. So you can line up all the screens in the press to that film, this is the basic registration of the print.

You will be able to see the film thru the negative space of the emulsified screen, and just gotta line them up perfectly and tighten the screws on the press…

Once all four screens are taped off on the back and loaded with the correct ink color, the printing begins!

This four station, six color manual press is perfect for two people to print at once. Just gotta print the colors in the correct order and communicate so no mistakes are made. Check out the final color printing

Then you get perfect prints like this! I wanted to design something with huge letters, so the levels of the Donkey Kong board were a perfect large surface area.

Hot off the press, I picked up the shirts and rushed over to the event where all the shirts sold out that night! I am reprinting some more shirts now, so they will be available on my Sleepy Dan web shop this week.

The two color back design showed off all the sponsors for this year’s event. The show was packed all night and has become such a hit for the up and coming Dallas vinyl arts culture.

I’m so proud to be part of this event and becoming a contributing vinyl designer. If you check out pics of the event and custom vinyls, I created a tribute to Mike Tyson’s Punch Out by creating two vinyl characters Bald Bull and King Hippo!

Seeing as I am the most manly of men you won’t find me doing this, but it is a pretty neat tutorial on how to turn that old t-shirt you never wear into a cotton necklace.