[Rodney]

This thread is to show the progress of taking the winning t-shirt design from this year's t-shirt design contest EXTRAVAGANZA and making it into a fully finished screen printed t-shirt.


You can Pre-Order the t-shirt here.

For those that are new, each year we have a t-shirt design contest here at T-ShirtForums and the wining designer wins a cool cash prize and their design gets printed and given out to forum members with X amount of posts.

I like to see the contests and giveaways as an extension of the forum's educational and sharing goals.

I think this year I'll actually be able to take some good photos and videos document the process.

My goal is to put out a cool t-shirt that you'd actually want to wear, and hopefully give you some ideas for your upcoming projects.
​

The t-shirts we'll be using for this project will be Black American Apparel style 2001 100% cotton t-shirts. This is a fine jersey t-shirt that is both ringspun and combed cotton which makes it very soft and tight knit, which is great for screen printing. Big thanks to American Apparel for donating the t-shirts for this project!

The design will be screen printed by the gang at ForwardPrinting.com using 4 colors of water based inks including the designers suggestion of a gold metallic to bring out the highlights in the design.

I'll update this thread as we go along

 

[ShowdownErik]

This should be pretty interesting. I'm quite curious to see how these turnout with this printing process. It will be great to compare it to what we use now.

 

[phazenix]

i bet the result will much better than the pic and wait for the video..

 

[Rodney]

So after you decide which printer you're going to work with to print your designs, the next step is getting a quote.

I emailed @Dan K at Forward Printing for a quote. He got back to me with a PDF estimate for a 4 color design done with water based inks. I forgot I wanted to get the t-shirts folded and bagged, so after I got the quote I emailed him back to get a revised quote.

After I was OK with the quote, the next step was emailing over the artwork. @Showdown Joel emailed me over the vector file for the design with some notes on the colors he had in mind (he suggested metallic gold ink for the highlights) and I forwarded the art file over to Dan to make sure they could open and that it would be fine to print.

After the order is officially placed, the next step is getting a digital proof of the design to show which ink colors will be used as well as the design placement and size.

This is where things got tricky

I'll go into the proofing process a bit more in my next post, but I wanted to post up this part of the progress so far.

The t-shirts are scheduled to print on Monday, August 16th and I'll be headed to Oakland, CA to the ForwardPrinting shop to take some nice photos and videos documenting the process!

 

[Rodney]

I'm in Oakland taking some photos and HD video, but you see some of the quick pics from my iPhone of the progress and process that I posted to Twitter here: #tsfe5 - Twitter Search

 

[PPop]

So, did I win my $100 bucks yet?

 

[Rodney]

So, did I win my $100 bucks yet?

?? I'm not sure what you're talking about

 

[Rodney]

I'm still working on putting the videos and photos together, but the good news is that the printed t-shirts shipped from Forward Printing yesterday and the UPS guy should be delivering them to my doorstep tomorrow

 

[sunnydayz]

Woohoo Is it just me or did these ones seem to get done a lot faster. Is it because before the shirts were cut and dyed? Cant wait to see them

 

[Rodney]

Woohoo Is it just me or did these ones seem to get done a lot faster. Is it because before the shirts were cut and dyed? Cant wait to see them

That was kinda my goal this year, to speed up the turnaround of getting the t-shirts printed. In previous year's it's taken several months for one reason or another

Unfortunately, in all my excitement in getting these printed so fast, I forgot to do the Member Appreciation Month/MHM voting this month, so that will be done next month (thanks to @Solmu for reminding me)

 

[sunnydayz]

Haha thats right, that usually does run at the same time. I totally missed it to if it makes you feel any better although I have been quite busy and not around as much lately Thats my excuse for not noticing haha.

 

[Rodney]

The t-shirts are printed, finished and delivered to my house I've

the first video[/URL] of part of the process. Pulp Fiction style, I started with the end first

I'm also submitting the design into the Impressions Awards. If you've got a great t-shirt design of your own, there's still time to enter (it's also free to enter).

 

[Dan K]

Alejandro was incredibly stoked on the video. He wrote the url down on a piece of paper and took it home so he could gather his family (wife and two sons) around the computer to watch it. I love that guy. I have been working with him for about 12 years now, he worked for me in my previous position, and I was so pleased when he wanted to come work at our shop a few years ago. Thanks for posting the video Rodney!

 

[PPop]

Thanks Rodney.

This makes me want to screen print again!!!

 

[Rodney]

I shipped out the first batch of t-shirts yesterday, some of you might even receive them today or tomorrow

The second batch is going out today to members all around the world (Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Poland, Hungary, Greece, more to the United States, Australia, Canada, etc )

 

[Rodney]

I mentioned this on Twitter, but I should mention it here too.

If you're shipping t-shirts and printing out shipping labels on an inkjet printer, you are losing money. You need to get a Zebra 2844 Thermal printer like ASAP Zebra Desktop LP 2844 Label Thermal Printer - Get great deals on items on eBay.com!

Doesn't use any ink and just *works*

 

[TahoeTomahawk]

wow, I remember reading about this concept years ago on CNET. We're gonna have to look into this, we have several laser jets laying around here, sometimes it's cheaper to buy a new one than to replace the drum when it goes bad.

 

[Rodney]

wow, I remember reading about this concept years ago on CNET. We're gonna have to look into this, we have several laser jets laying around here, sometimes it's cheaper to buy a new one than to replace the drum when it goes bad.

The Zebra thermal printer is seriously awesome. It never needs ink and works perfect for ups and usps shipping. The only thing you have to buy are more labels. I bought mine from ebay like 4 years ago and it just keeps going and going. I think I paid like $100-$150 for mine.

I use it in conjunction wih endicia.com and it made shipping 200+ t-shirts SO much faster.

 

[JeridHill]

I absolutely love this design! It's the one I voted for! Hmmm, maybe I'll be in the first batch.

 

[TahoeTomahawk]

I need this.
I am the slowest shipper in history.