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You can have my shirt when you pry it off my cold, dead torso.

That’s how strongly I feel about the Bella+Canvas 3001 Unisex tee. In fact, it’s our go-to shirt for screen printing.

Here’s Bella’s description of this awesome tee:

This updated unisex essential fits like a well-loved favorite, featuring a crew neck, short sleeves and designed with superior combed and ring-spun cotton that acts as the best blank canvas for printing. Offered in a variety of solid and heather colors.

This shirt feels super soft to wear, it’s light (4.2 oz) and it’s 100% cotton. I love 100% cotton because it’s easy to maintain and breathes better than many blends. Plus, it looks fantastic on me. They don’t mention that on their website, but it’s true. Actually, this shirt looks good on every person we’ve sold it to or printed for. It’s just a great choice of tee when you need something that fits a wide range of bodies.

They also have some fantastic color choices in this tee.

For some reason, the pale yellow (pictured) feels a tiny bit lighter and easier to wear than darker colors like black or orange – but I allow for my imagination to have taken over here because I love the color so much. Some of my favorite printed Bella tees of ours are black.

The counterpart for the 3001 is the Ladies 6004. It’s basically the same shirt, but with slightly shorter sleeves and a tighter fit. Even so, the unisex t-shirt looks great on feminine bodies, which I can’t say for many other brands where frumpy seems to be an okay standard. This one I can actually suggest and still sleep at night.

If 100% Made in America is important to you, you’ve got options. They also have the 3001U, which is the same shirt but 100% made in the USA. There are fewer color choices, but maybe you can sleep better at night. Still, their policy on only working with overseas factories who don’t use sweatshop conditions makes me feel good about the brand in general.

This is a super value shirt, which is another reason I recommend it to our custom print clients. I believe it’s the lowest-priced shirt in the Bella+Canvas brand and for the money it’s far superior to similarly-priced brands like Gildan or Jerzees.

There are also some reasons I love this tee that only have to do with the screen printing process. These shirts are super easy to print on. First, they’re light (4.2 oz), so getting them on and off platens, folding back into boxes and all the other handling we do doesn’t make us feel like our arms will drop off after a run of 50. They also have a tight weave, so the ink goes on smooth like buttah.

We also have very few loose strings, holes and sewing weirdness when we get the blanks in our shop. Their consistency in quality is nice to rely on. We have had some issues with certain colors (you know, the exact ones we needed at the time) being out of stock at Bella and all our third-party vendors, which can be frustrating. So we have to be cautious about recommending it to customers, making sure we get their order in sooner than later.

So let’s sum up:

• This shirt looks great on me
• We get great printing results
• It looks great on me
• Super Duper great value

I realize that I don’t really have anything negative to say about this t-shirt. So if my review sounds like I’m shilling for Bella+Canvas, you’re right to be suspicious – but I’m not. I decided to start off our t-shirt reviews with our favorite tee. Coincidentally, it’s also the one I look best wearing.

Questions? Just email [email protected]. We’re listening!

Same art box I’ve used since 1990.

If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you probably know that I create a lot of digital art. You may not know that I didn’t start my art career as a digital artist. Nope. In fact, I am from that very long ago Once Upon a Time time where art schools did not even teach digital art. My school, the American Academy of Art only had one little Macintosh (what we called them back in prehistoric times), tucked away in a closet. Only advanced students were allowed to touch it [HAND SLAP]. Which was fine by me, because my computer knowledge at that time was limited to writing “go to” commands in BASIC. Adobe Illustrator (88) was still an infant.

So I did what I’ve always done, which is to create art using my hands, pencils, watercolors, ink, paper, glue and whatever I could find laying around. It was much later in my career that I started using a computer to create graphic design, and then animation for Nickelodeon. Which is amazing, because I feel that my experiences in crafting mixed media art from real world materials, sketching and painting helped me be more creative with my digital tools.

I still do a lot of digital work, but these days, more than ever, I like to get my hands messy by painting on wood.

Here’s a piece I’m just completing on a skateboard:

I like to use paint pens and Sharpies. This one in particular I did freehand, without an idea in my head of what it would be. Sometimes I just go with the flow to see what happens.

Other times, I’ll pick up a piece of wood and try to figure out what it wants to be before I start decorating. Like this chunk of 2′ x 4′ that I had laying around:

I’m trying to figure out what it wants to be. Which sounds like a lot of New Age bullshit, but really, it…

…nope. It does. It just sounds like New Age bullshit. Anyway, what I’m doing is scanning the wood and trying not to think about bills, pets, kids, my broken windshield wiper, bills, what’s for dinner, bills, or why my shoe keeps coming untied.

After I cleared my mind (more bullshit, that never happens), I flipped this puppy over and saw…

… a whale!

Here’s where I stop blogging about it and get to work. If you want to see the finished piece, follow Sparky Firepants on twitter or instagram. You can also see it in our Sparky Firepants Etsy shop, among our other specially special painted pieces.

Questions? Comments? Let ‘em rip!

Step inside the Sparky Firepants screen print shop and see how an image is burned onto a screen to make a stencil for screen printing. This is a small part of how we make your t-shirts!

It’s okay if you don’t have a beer at the end. But if you feel inspired, please join me. Let me know what you imbibed. I’m always looking for great new beers.