Hey, thought I'd sign up since I've been lurking for info for so long!
Basically, when my girlfriend gave birth to our baby back in February I had to quit my job to look after them both (Complications with the babys birth and the recovery from a C-Section) when my bosses wouldn't allow me to work from home. Stuck for money I started investigating a few ways to bring in some extra cash and decided that with a background of freelance graphics design etc I'd have a go at screen printing baby clothes.
I got all of my inks, mesh etc and built screens and a makeshift press in the shed and practiced until I thought things were going well. Fast forward to two weeks ago - I opened an eBay shop and had pretty decent success! Doing the screen printing in such a small space and not having the room to make things easier for myself wasn't great!
I've had an influx of orders and just couldn't keep up with looking after my daughter and having to wash screens between colour changes, setting up new screens etc etc so I put some of my profits in to a cheap Liyu SC631 cutter and a 38x38 heat press! I was worried that some of the small details in my designs wouldn't transfer across to vinyl very well so I chose a quick vector and ran it through the printer then pressed it. Some of the lines are so much smaller than what I'll be using so I think I'll have no problems!
I must say, for a £200 cutter I'm very impressed! Everything I read hinted that it would be hard to set up, hard to get decent cuts etc but I've got to say the opposite! I've NEVER worked with a cutter or vinyl before, and within half an hour I'd made this using some cheap unknown brand vinyl. It's not one of my design and it's nothing like I'd normally do, I just thought it'd be a good test to see what's possible. All of my doubts have been put to rest and I can't wait to get my decent vinyl later on and fulfil all of the orders I have at the moment (After spending all of tonight practicing and testing my work).
Just thought I'd put a post up because I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions soon enough!
) - Looking forward to sharing some of my work and getting some feedback!
Setup:
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First thing I've done with vinyl:
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Basically, when my girlfriend gave birth to our baby back in February I had to quit my job to look after them both (Complications with the babys birth and the recovery from a C-Section) when my bosses wouldn't allow me to work from home. Stuck for money I started investigating a few ways to bring in some extra cash and decided that with a background of freelance graphics design etc I'd have a go at screen printing baby clothes.
I got all of my inks, mesh etc and built screens and a makeshift press in the shed and practiced until I thought things were going well. Fast forward to two weeks ago - I opened an eBay shop and had pretty decent success! Doing the screen printing in such a small space and not having the room to make things easier for myself wasn't great!
I've had an influx of orders and just couldn't keep up with looking after my daughter and having to wash screens between colour changes, setting up new screens etc etc so I put some of my profits in to a cheap Liyu SC631 cutter and a 38x38 heat press! I was worried that some of the small details in my designs wouldn't transfer across to vinyl very well so I chose a quick vector and ran it through the printer then pressed it. Some of the lines are so much smaller than what I'll be using so I think I'll have no problems!
I must say, for a £200 cutter I'm very impressed! Everything I read hinted that it would be hard to set up, hard to get decent cuts etc but I've got to say the opposite! I've NEVER worked with a cutter or vinyl before, and within half an hour I'd made this using some cheap unknown brand vinyl. It's not one of my design and it's nothing like I'd normally do, I just thought it'd be a good test to see what's possible. All of my doubts have been put to rest and I can't wait to get my decent vinyl later on and fulfil all of the orders I have at the moment (After spending all of tonight practicing and testing my work).
Just thought I'd put a post up because I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions soon enough!
) - Looking forward to sharing some of my work and getting some feedback!Setup:
First thing I've done with vinyl:
