[Paulie]

Okay....where to begin??

Name is Paul (Probably pretty obvious from my screen name) I am a middle age dude (married 22 years, 2 nearly grown kids) that has spent the last decade as the Art Director for a small magazine. Was a full time job until about 5 years ago when i took the job on freelance as subscriptions and advertising were both declining. So i took a paycut and started working from home. Not a terrible deal all in all!

I was recently informed that as of January of 2009 i will no longer have this gig. Times are tough all over so i understand, but after all these years of pretty much doing my own thing i am not particularly interested in going out and trying to find a desk job.

Living in a tourist area I have for the last few years toyed with the idea of going into the tourist t-shirt and other nick-knack touristy sublimation thing.

Ok long introductions over and now y'all know more about me then is probably necessary but here is my dilemma. Can a middle age guy with some decent artistic skills make a living doing this?

I have been looking into sublimation for t-shirts, mugs, tiles etc but it seems i am limited to printing on light poly cotton tees with this process. I am concerned that people may be turned off by poly cotton as opposed to a silk screened 100% cotton tee. Cost of the shirts also seems to be much higher!!

I have been looking on ebay and there are 6 in 1 sublimation machines for about $400 are these worth the money and would they do what i need??

Are there any decent ways to print 4 color art on a darker tshirt besides the costly t-jet?? Iron on transfers dont seem to be desirable or last....or is that a myth?

Also would be interested in eventually getting into a fast t-jet or something similar but have heard maintenance is a problem and the machines are not evolved enough to really make them profitable. True? False? I went to a demonstration and they seem pretty cool!

Ok the newbie has rambled enough....thanks in advance for any help y'all can give me!

Paulie

 

[pukingdeserthobo]

hey Paul
read this
http://www.t-shirtforums.com/general-t-shirt-selling-discussion/t48532.html
and this
http://www.t-shirtforums.com/general-t-shirt-selling-discussion/t37985.html

 

[Paulie]

Hey puking,
I have been reading here for a while now. Have seen those threads and as informative as they are there is so freaking much info it is a bit hard to digest. Was really hoping for a little personal advice as this is all a bit overwhelming and i am sort of scrambling for a way to pay the mortgage and remain my own man so to speak.

 

[pukingdeserthobo]

Are there any decent ways to print 4 color art on a darker tshirt besides the costly t-jet?? Iron on transfers dont seem to be desirable or last....or is that a myth?

u can use silk screen,
i hear you times are hard right know.

 

[Paulie]

Can you silkscreen 4 color process art?? I was under the impression that with silk screen you could not do process printing?

 

[pukingdeserthobo]

no u are able ur just gonna need to have a base on it
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEfWyJTBjQE[/media]

 

[Paulie]

Well that is cool!! Was not aware that was possible. Unfortunately i am not a screen printer and do not the facilities to set up a silk screen press. Plus it did not seem to be able to print on dark shirts...which seems rather desirable

 

[lben]

Paul, you can also print with chromablast ink on 100% cotton (similar to sublimation). Silk screening is messy and a lot of people are complaining about not having any business right now. If you have a lot of tourists you can sell sublimation stuff other than t-shirts, or you could do both. Screen printing requires a lot of room too, but if you have the room and the money to invest you can make a living doing it.

 

[pukingdeserthobo]

Well that is cool!! Was not aware that was possible. Unfortunately i am not a screen printer and do not the facilities to set up a silk screen press. Plus it did not seem to be able to print on dark shirts...which seems rather desirable

well i tryed lol
u can print on black like i said ur just gonna need to have a white under base

 

[Paulie]

Paul, you can also print with chromablast ink on 100% cotton (similar to sublimation). Silk screening is messy and a lot of people are complaining about not having any business right now. If you have a lot of tourists you can sell sublimation stuff other than t-shirts, or you could do both. Screen printing requires a lot of room too, but if you have the room and the money to invest you can make a living doing it.

Plan is to do a variety of items. Tshirts, Tile murals, coffee cups, cutting boards etc....with touristy local stuff on them. Looking to start as cheap as possible and out of my home office. Thats why i was looking at the 4 in 1 sublimation things and wondered if they were worth anything.

 

[lben]

Plan is to do a variety of items. Tshirts, Tile murals, coffee cups, cutting boards etc....with touristy local stuff on them. Looking to start as cheap as possible and out of my home office. Thats why i was looking at the 4 in 1 sublimation things and wondered if they were worth anything.

I bought 2 of them off eBay. One is still in the box. I like the way they are put together and assembly and disassembly is pretty straight forward. I paid about $400 for each of them. I have a regular stand alone mug press and flat press also, but I wanted to be able to do caps and plates. Plus it never hurts to have extra presses on hand just in case.

They heat up really fast (a lot faster than my other ones) and they cool down pretty quick too. I haven't tried pressing with them yet.

I like the versatility of sublimation, too, which is why I went into it. There are special papers out there for printing on dark fabrics, but I'm not sure if they are for cotton or poly cloth. I bought some opaque backing material that will go on dark fabrics (any kind of fabric) but it's for regular inkjet heat transfers, so they will have a very heavy hand. I didn't understand the concept of "hand" until after I made a few t-shirts with all three methods.

So after running all 3 kinds of shirts, I can say that I prefer the sublimation and chromablast hand. Someone on here used chromablast paper with I think clarisa ink from Epson and it worked just fine, too. Anyhow I stick to light/white fabrics for my t's.