Well, Jaimie, I've been studying this for ~7 months now and have not actually started making any product yet. Unless you count my company logo. The only thing I've bought so far is Affinity Designer which is kind of a poor man's Adobe Illustrator.
There are several things that you will need to get started and there is lots to learn. But one of the common things you will need to get started is a printer. Or a couple of 'em. Why? Well if you're screen printing you're gonna need a printer to print out the "positive" which is just as it sounds: sort of the opposite of a photo negative. You'll need an ink jet printer for that.
But if you're doing that, you'll also need an exposure device and a dark room. Because it's pretty much the same process as exposing a photograph. Except that you expose it onto a screen that YOU have coated with emulsion. And then you'll need some water pressure to blow out the parts that don't need to be on the screen. Of course, you would need a "booth" to do that. You know, so that it won't go everywhere and will also catch the emulsion that you're blowing off so that it doesn't contaminate the water supply.
And then you'll need some inks and a big-*** machine to print stuff. Sure, you can use a small machine but I don't think that will satisfy your artistic side.
Oh, and then you'll need to clean up afterwards! For that you'll need chemicals and equipment.
I said all that just to say that there are other options besides screen printing that might be a better first step. Especially when printing smaller quantities. Sure you'll need to bump up to screen printing once you begin to sell in larger volumes.
But until you reach that point, you'll probably want to look into "sublimation." That is, if your art has lots of colors and details. Why? Because you can print it just as it looks on your computer screen and then use a heat press to press it onto a shirt. Will it look perfect? Well, maybe. See, the thing with sublimation is that it only sticks to polyester. So it will look best on a 100% polyester shirt. If you go with a blend of cotton/polyester, it will stick to the polyester parts and might look faded or at least not quite as vibrant as you'd like.
You would need a dedicated printer for this as the inks cost a bit more than regular printer ink. Oh, and unless you're only going to print small stuff like toddler onesies, you're gonna need to go with a printer that will print larger than 11" X 15." You can find some of those that are not prohibitively expensive.
I want to tell you more of what I've learned, but my fingers are getting tired. Use the search function on this thread and read all you can. I've been learning a tremendous amount and I'm sure you will, too!
thanks guys!
