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Got a Sparky Firepants tee? Put it to work for you to get free stuff!

Yup. We’re offering our loyal fans a free print or $5 off a stock tee when you wear any Sparky tee to Vegan Oktoberfest. We’ll be performing our world famous, live screen printing magic throughout the festival. We’ll be printing two Vegan Oktoberfest commemorative logos and our own unique designs on blank stock tees and on any apparel you bring!

If you’ve never experienced our live printing, it’s a blast. We’ve printed on skirts, blazers, leggings, vests – you name it. Exhibitionists welcome (we’ve had people strip). For the more modest, you can change in a port-a-potty like a superhero. Either way, you get to see the awesome spectacle of ink being laid down on a shirt right in front of your eyes!

This year, we have a super secret new design just for our vegan friends. I can’t tell you what it is yet, but I have a feeling it’s going to be crazy popular. Psst – keep an eye on our insta and you may get a sneak peek.

BONUS FUN

We’re also partnering with our very favorite vegan apparel friends, Cowhugger and Threads for Love. Our free print offer is extended to their tees as well! Yup. Just wear one of their super cool vegan tees and we’ll give you a free live print, or $5 off a stock tee.

Come join us at Vegan Oktoberfest. It will be a ton more fun with you there.

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!

Sparky & Jenni with the Hawthorne Middle School Eco Club, the coolest kids like, ever.

Print t-shirts live and in person while showing grade school students how to conserve our resources? Sign us up!

A few months ago we got a call from Toni Min, science and math teacher at Hawthorne Middle School. She had been to our booth at a festival and saw our on-the-spot t-shirt printing. Toni told me about her after-school Eco Club, which is completely awesome. They actively learn about ecology and the environment by working on projects such as growing their own garden and talking about the benefits of recycling.

One of the more interesting things we do at our live screen printing events is put our crazy art on people’s existing garments. We’ve printed on some really odd stuff before (wool sweater), and even had a few brave souls strip so we could print on what they were wearing at the moment (which is why we carry a robe). Toni loved this idea (minus the stripping) and wanted to know if we would be willing to print on her students’ shirts specifically for the Eco Club – thereby demonstrating how we can reuse old things rather than always acquiring new stuff.

Jenni and I are totally on board with that. We do a few pro bono events a year for causes we align with, so it wasn’t hard to get us to say yes to this one. We love working with kids, we work hard to protect the environment, we already had the ink…

Sometimes our live printing events can get chaotic and crazy. At high-profile events, it can be a nonstop situation, printing and interacting for hours straight. Apparently people love watching what we do up close and personal! So we weren’t sure what to expect with the HMS students.

Let me tell you, these kids were the coolest cats around. Smart as whips, uber-curious, funny, and just crazy fun to be around. It was a total blast. Thanks, guys! You rock.

Sparky explaining how it all works.

Ms. Min checks the temp on a drying t-shirt

New shirts! Old shirts, but… new.

We even printed on dark tees.

You can see us print live all over Los Angeles. Sign up for our newsletter and find out where we’re going next!

Imagine this printed on leather.

Is that a weird question? I mean, after all, it says, “vegan” on it. Of course it’s vegan. It’s right there in the phrase.

Yup, I get it. Except I’m not talking about the message printed on the shirt. I’m asking what’s behind the printing of that shirt.

Is it vegan?

Before we get into some answers, let’s think about a situation we can all relate to.

You’re at a restaurant and you ask your waitperson if your selection is vegan. They pause, consider, and say, “Uhh, yeah. Sure. I think so. Hmmm. Probably.”

How do you feel about that? Kind of… annoyed? Frustrated?

That’s often how Jenni and I feel when we see someone selling t-shirts plastered with a catchy vegan phrase and ask, “Is your printer vegan? Do they use vegan inks or sustainable methods?” and we’re met with blank stares – or worse, total apathy.

Annoyed. Frustrated. Somewhere a unicorn just died.

Even as we clench our fists and mourn mythical creatures, we’d much rather educate than berate. Better results, ya know? Besides, we’re not perfect. We do our best. Caring is numero uno.

Hopefully, you’re one of those vegans who really does care about more than how much cash they can make in the vegan marketplace. As plant-based eaters, I believe we’re also default environmentalists. If we’re going to put our message out there for the world to wear, we should at least try to move in the right direction.

For you, Caring Vegan, I’ve jotted down some information that will help prepare you for your next run of vegan tees. Read on!

No Worms Were Harmed in the Silk Screening Process

We can clear our consciences right off the bat with this little nugget. In silk screening, also known as screen printing, a mesh screen is used as a stencil to push the ink through. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the screens were made of silk. As you might have already guessed, silk is not vegan. Oh no! What to do?

You can chill on this one. The good news is that, these days, screens are made from nylon, not silk. The term silk screening is still used, because, well, we’re used to it. Also, nylon screening doesn’t sound as artsy-fartsy.

Now that we know the worms can relax, let’s move onto inks. Are they vegan? Are they safe?

Are Screen Printing Inks Vegan?

Now and then, we get this question from some of our lovely customers. I wish more people would ask (or care). In fact, one of our customers spent time calling around Los Angeles with that question, only to be disappointed by printers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. Sound crazy? We thought so.

Thankfully, there’s a simple method we use to find out if the ink we want to use is made with animal products or tested on animals. You ready for this? We call the manufacturer.

Mmm-hmm. Yup. That’s it. Even better, we get answers. Sometimes we have to wait on hold while they find their chemical engineer, or we have to rephrase the question. A lot of people don’t immediately understand what “vegan” would mean, so we educate them and ask more specifically about whether or not the ink contains any part of an animal. We’ve always received informative, respectful answers. It’s just that simple.

So if you ask your printer if they use vegan ink, they may not know what you mean. Hey, that’s okay, this is your opportunity to educate them. If you explain nicely, rephrase your question and they give you flack (or don’t know), consider going elsewhere.

Soft Hand, Cold Heart

So you’re at your local vegan fest, festing it up with your jackfruit tacos and all the Soy Dream you can handle, and you find yourself at a vegan apparel booth. Wow, those are some sick vegan tees. So soft, and you can’t even feel the print. You just gotta have one!

Hold up there. Before you plunk down your vegan cash, let’s talk about how those t-shirts are printed. To get a really soft hand like that, screen printers use either water-based ink (we’ll get to that in a minute), or possibly a method called discharge printing. Essentially what a discharge print does is bleach the dye out of the shirt, then a water-based ink is applied for color. What’s the problem?

Discharge inks are highly toxic. There’s formaldehyde and a whole cocktail of other chemicals that you’re not supposed to breathe while printing (or ever). Why should you care about what some screen printer is breathing? Well, that bleaching cocktail at some point not only vaporizes into the air, some of it gets washed down the drain. Where does it go? Some of it gets filtered and sent back to you as tap water. Some it goes out to the ocean, unfiltered. Some of those those animals that you fight so hard to protect live there.

Recently, there have been developments in discharge printing that allow for an enzymatic process. That means “natural” enzymes are used to bleach out the dye rather than toxic chemicals. Still, there a couple things we need to consider:

1. The dye from the shirt is still released somewhere. Where did it go?
2. What constitutes a “natural” enzyme? Where do they come from? Animal source? Do you know?

If we’re going to demand that people not use animal products, we should demand to know how that vintagey t-shirt is made. It affects both our environment and the animals.

Water Based Ink is So, Like… Sustainable, Man

Water-based printing is great. It looks good, it feels good on the shirt, it even sounds really environmental. After all it has water in it! That must be awesome! The assumption is that, unlike plastisol-based printing, it’s the best thing for the environment. Why, just take a sip of this water-based ink, it’s delicious. *disclaimer: don’t do that.

Before you drink the water-based kool-aid, read about the myths of water-based inks. Then come back here.

So now you understand that water-based ink is not just water and harmless color made from unicorn breath, it’s actually made with solvents and other chemicals. Not that plastisol ink is chemical-free, but the cleaning methods are very different (and the way we do it, sustainable). Water-based printing can be done sustainably, so knowing how things should be done will help you choose wisely.

What About the Shirts?

Well, thankfully, most shirts are typically cotton or synthetic and no animals are used. However, there are no innocents in textile manufacturing. Virtually every method affects our world in some way. Here’s a great source of information on the different fabrics and their impact on the planet: http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/clothes/environmental-impacts

Vegans Are Environmentalists

As you can see, no t-shirt printing method is 100% perfect for the environment. It’s about making an educated, conscious choice. You can’t please everyone, but having solid answers for your customers is a pretty big deal.

If you care about the environment and the animals, it’s worth asking your screen printer about their methods. If they can’t (or won’t) answer your questions, it’s the same as a waiter not telling you if your meal is vegan or not.

You wouldn’t accept that, so why accept anything less than vegan and environmentally-friendly screen printing?

More questions? Ask in the comments or email us!

It’s a Sparky print studio tour. Expect nothing less than weird.

It’s sometime in the 1940s. A guy plays an accordion in the yard of a Chicago brick walkup. Chin up, with a cocky grin on his face, a cigarette dangles from his lip. He’s hamming it up for the camera, you can see he loves the attention.

This is my Grandpa Nick.

Sifting through old photos today, this one jumped out at me for all the reasons above. It was so iconic, I decided to make a halftone print. Sometimes we don’t choose what the art will be, it chooses us.

Unisex. Let’s take a hot minute and dissect that word.

uni: one

sex: gender (in this case, anyway)

One gender. Hmmm. That’s weird, because you’d think a piece of apparel designed as unisex would mean that only one sex can wear it. Well, that doesn’t sound right, because unisex tees are made so at least two sexes can wear them. It should really be called duosex, but perhaps the powers that be in the international apparel classification society were concerned that would be too Ziggy Stardust for the masses.

But let’s not beat around the bush. What they’re really saying is unisexless. Sounds a little like eunuch sexless. Except that the problem with unisex tees isn’t a problem for men, castrated or intact. It’s really a problem for women, who put on a unisex t-shirt and feel… un-sexy. See, I just replaced the i with a hyphen, added a y (as in, WHY?) and have instantly unraveled this deep, dark apparel secret of the ages. It’s a like a 100% ringspun Dan Brown novel.

So if you’re a woman or a very feminine dude, and you just put on a unisex tee, looked at yourself in the mirror and said, “Cleaning Lady,” I have a solution for you. I will help you put the sexy back in unisex in three simple steps.

Wait, are you a cleaning lady? Okay, you need to do this, too.

It involves scissors. Please have some.

Then follow the super simple steps in the PDF I have lovingly placed on the internets for easy duosex downloading. It’s right here: http://bit.ly/1kMRb6u

And I will now stop saying duosex. It sounds a little too much like an activity, rather than a  designation.

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.

In this video, I explain how I built my own exposure unit for screen printing… which is really just an excuse to talk about more important ideas like consumerism, DIY and experimenting to be more independent in life. It’s about duct tape (quack!) and trying new things.

If you’re a screen printer, you’ll learn how I made an exposure unit for under $20.

If you don’t care about screen printing, you’ll get some free homespun wisdom from Sparky Firepants. Go forth and spin some homes. Whatever that means.

It’s only 10 minutes, but I packed in about an hour’s worth of ideas. Enjoy and please share!

Make sure you subscribe to the Sparky Firepants YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sparkyfirepants

Sometimes you’ll find a screen printer who touts their enviro-friendliness by advertising, “We only use water-based inks!”

Maybe you care about chemicals that go into our water supply, and maybe you don’t. For people who do care, this kind of claim really shouts out to you. “These are my people! They care about the Earth like I do!”

That may be true. I give a lot of credit to intention. Before we wave our hands in the air like we just don’t care… I also give a lot of credence to the Buddhist saying about the finger pointing to the moon, which is about looking beyond the finger to find the truth. Sometimes the truth is that the printer intends to do the right thing for the environment by using water-based inks. They are moving in the right direction by being conscious about their screen printing practices. That’s very mindful of them and I applaud it. But to be truly “earth-friendly,” we need to look deeper and understand what’s behind the curtain of water.

People sometimes assume that because it’s water-based, it’s automatically earth-friendly. It definitely sounds friendly, like we could drink a tall, cold glass of screen printing ink and not die. Or, we could just wash it all down the sink with the moldy salsa. The problem is that water-based ink is not just water. There are pigments, binders, thickeners, and sometimes, even co-solvents in the ink residue (source:Ryonet).

So even though it sounds enviro-friendly, water-based ink can still be toxic and not good for municipal sewage systems – or the oceans and rivers where the water eventually winds up.

If the ink itself weren’t enough, we have to consider how the screens are cleaned. Water-based inks can be cleaned with water… unless they dry out. Then we need to use much stronger solvents. While they do make solvents that are more enviro-happy, we can’t assume every shop who says they use water-based ink is using them. Or that they’re following other earth-happy shop practices.

Plastic… Phantastic?

In our shop, we use plastisol inks for most of our printing. They are PVC-based, Phthalide-free inks that when cured with heat turn to a solid. We clean our screens with a soy-based cleaner and cotton rags. There’s no water involved, so no ink goes down any drains.

Is that better than water-based? It’s not a death match between water-based and plastisol. There are good reasons for using both, depending on the situation. For example, we need to print on spandex with plastisol ink (it’s stretchy). We print posters with water-based ink (you can’t heat cure paper).

Good shops are never perfect, but they are open about their methods (truth) and always improving (intention). Those shops that tout their use of water-based inks should be just as knowledgable and open about their ink’s content and cleaning methods.

Do you care? Then do this!

If you care about the environment, ask lots of questions of your printer before you assume they’re more earth-friendly than others. Try these:

What type of ink do you use? Can you point me to the manufacturer’s web site?

What solvents do you use to clean your screens?

Where does the water go when you clean screens? Is it municipal drainage or you have a different disposal solution?

What are the right answers? They’re the answers that make you feel comfortable about getting your printing done. It’s that simple. But I will say that if a printer refuses to answer them, you should keep looking.

If this sounds like a lot of work just to get some frikkin’ t-shirts printed, you’re right. If you care, you care. If not, you probably stopped paying attention a few paragraphs ago.

The point is, you can never assume that something is environmentally friendly by reading an advertisement. Do a little homework. If you really do care about the environment, it won’t hurt a bit.

When Kristy Beauvais, the “Flounder” of FocusFish had a holiday show coming up, she needed some branded leotards for her camp students. With a hard deadline, she didn’t know how to make it happen with all the other things she handles running her acrobatic camps. Thankfully, a mutual friend sent her to us and we helped her sort it out.

We knew it would be a bit of a challenge. Kristy didn’t know anything about screen printing on spandex. We didn’t know anything about wearing leotards for acrobatics. Jazzercise, sure, but… oops. That’s too much information. Anyway, there was a lot of missing info about what was needed.

So we talked… a lot. We learned how her student performers use ropes and the trapeze and where they tend to get abrasions (ok… ow). Getting the right material and style at the right price takes a lot of research. There’s also a high level of difficulty when printing on spandex or other stretchy materials. So after mucho education on all our parts, we made some meaningful suggestions to Kristy that narrowed down the field.

Typically, we order apparel for our clients because we have access to thousands of styles and brands at wholesale prices. In this case, with the info we gave her, Kristy was able to find her own local source for her leotards at a price she could afford. So we worked out a rate for her that included printing on the blank stock she brought to us.

This is a perfect case study for why we don’t just list “generic” rates on our web site. The more we can learn about our client’s business and how they plan to use the apparel we print, the better price and result we can give them. With Kristy’s guidance, we stuck the landing. Boo-ya.

FocusFish had a successful holiday show and her performers looked awesome. I’ll share some photos from FocusFish, but please go check out her programs, especially if you’re in Southern California. Not only did we feel good about making her students look great, we love supporting worthwhile programs like this. Thanks, Kristy!

All photos are ©2014 by Donna Fedorowycz

Rudolph?

Don’t look at me, I’m horrid. Really. Okay, look. Just for a second. I know how your morbid little mind works.

Alright, that’s enough. Back to reading.

It’s just before New Year’s and I’m nursing a bad chest cold (is there a good one?). Maybe that’s a bad turn of phrase. I am not actually the one nursing the cold here, Jenni is nursing me. Big difference. I may publicly throw my swagger around like sweet chocolate treats, but when I get the sniffles, I turn into a sniveling mess.

Still, I’ve been meaning to write a glorious post to sum up our first official year of screen printing. I have scant time left before Ryan Seacrest and Judge Sotomayor officially let us into 2014, so there may be some chest cold-level sniveling mixed in with the gloriousness.

We did it!

First things first. We did it! We turned an idea into ink on t-shirts and happy clients. In January, I was still setting up our first press and trying to figure out how to build our shop out of two-by-fours and a halogen light from Home Depot.

By May we were selling our vegan t-shirts to a Sparky-loving crowd at WorldFest. By September we were serving (multiple) repeat custom screen print clients.

It’s four days to closing out our first official year and while we’re not (yet) the best-known screen printing shop in Los Angeles, we’ve made some really great t-shirts for thousands of great people. That makes me happy. If you’re one of those people, thank you! It was a pleasure serving you.

Oops, I did it again. Or at least once.

There were more hard lessons learned for us this year than even Amanda Bynes would appreciate. The reality checks were bountiful. Here are a few highlights of things we learned:

• Even though I shake my fist at the gods and swear it cannot be done… I will do it anyway. So new motto for 2014: Shut up and print.
• Cheap-o t-shirts feel like wearing a Brillo pad. So no more printing on crappy cheap-o t-shirts without a signed and notarized consent form or a ruling by a Federal judge. At least now we know where to get low-cost shirt blanks that feel like cotton instead of steel wool.
• We can print on paper lunch bags better and more reliably than an inkjet. Panic first, figure it out second, get ‘er done, third.
• So far we haven’t really needed that heat press and wide format inkjet printer to compete with local shops. In fact, we’ve learned how to do it all differently so we don’t have to worry about competition.
• We will screw some things up – but we can deal with it. There was that time I ordered the wrong shirts. Actually, now that I look back it was three times. Thankfully we work with two local vendors who were able to send us the right shirts in a day. I generated some unwashable armpit stains over this, but thankfully I own a t-shirt company. Crisis averted, my own stinky shirt replaced, and we soldiered on.

We’ve made our own path.

Sometimes it’s been a slow and painful hike down that path. There have been mosquito clouds to swat and thorny vines to machete our way through to get to this point. All along the way, we kept getting glimpses of the easy, paved road in the distance. It was tempting to step onto it and just do it like everyone else. It was tempting to take the cheapest route with heat presses and direct-to-garment printers, to play the game of competing on price. Just when temptation was strongest, someone would step onto our path and say, “Hey, I like how you’re doing that. Can you help me?” And instantly our focus would go back to printing by hand the best t-shirts we can for the people who appreciate our style of service.

We couldn’t have made that path without help from people all over the world, mostly via the internet. Every time I got stuck on a printing problem, someone from Ryonet, T-shirt Forums, Catspit, or even an ink vendor would rescue me via blog post or YouTube video. Huge thanks to them. I plan to pay it forward to new screen printers in 2014 with some instructional posts and videos of my own.

Go ahead, Judge… lower that ball!

It’s almost 2014 and I haven’t yet mapped our path. It’s all in my head, which is currently stuffed up. I’ll blow it out my nose in a few days and share it on Instagram. Lucky you.

Despite the phlegm hiding in the dark corners of my lungs, I need to print an order right now. Sometimes that’s how it works when you serve people with your craft. Either you take it easy and they get a huge letdown… or you swallow some boiling tea, man up, and get ‘er done.

As selfless and martyr-making as I made that sound, it’s actually the most selfish thing I could do today. I started printing for me and I love doing it. The fact that someone gets to enjoy what I create is very cool, but I think I might get more out of it in the larger picture.

Wow, that tea made me ramble. I better shut up and print now.

All the best to you and yours in the new year!

Ow! Holy Sh***! OW!

I’m experiencing a sharp pain in my job estimator (it’s near the gall bladder). I take a deep breath, hold my side and stare at the ceiling until it passes.

Okay, that’s a little better. I’m still twitching, but at least I’m under control for now.

I get this pain every time a customer emails me artwork and I instantly see how expensive it’s going to be to print it on a t-shirt. See, the pain I feel isn’t for me, it’s for them. It’s sympathy pain.

Oh, the artwork may be gorgeous; a hand-painted original in all the shiny colors you’d find inside a bag of Tropical Skittles. It looks great on paper and even nice in the email. It might look nice on a shirt, but it’s going to cost a small fortune.

So what’s the deal? Why isn’t it cheaper? In this age of scanning and uploading art to Vista Print to get $6.00 business cards, why does getting a few shirts screen printed require a second mortgage?

I’ve covered this before in other posts, but I want to talk to you specifically about your artwork. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of CMYK vs spot color or high res file conversion. You don’t need to know all that to get shirts printed, and you shouldn’t have to get a Graphic Design degree to save a little money. The advice I have for you is super duper simple and I can sum it up in one word: PLANNING.

In short, you’re doing it backwards. Typically what many of our customers do is:

1. decide they want a new business logo or design for their event
2. find an artist who will create it (free or cheap), and then;
3. go find sources to print it.

Backwards! Well, sort of. Let me explain.

I know your friend/sister-in-law/nephew is a fantastic artist. You need to know up front if they have any experience in prepping artwork for print. Ideally, they should be the ones responsible for creating art you can actually use in different types of media. If not, all bets are off.

Even better, do a little research into the different ways your design will used. Will you need a sign made? Will you need it in one color on a stress ball? T-shirts you can actually afford to print? Self-inking stamp? Most vendors will have guidelines for you to follow. We post our artwork guidelines right here on our site. If you or your artist ever want to ask questions about our process, we give you unlimited advice free of charge. It’s what we do.

This way, you’re prepared to talk to an artist before anything is created.

No matter how much you love your artist and their beautiful art, you need to be prepared for all the different ways you’ll want it reproduced. That may require a little work on your part, but in the end you will have a much easier time getting what you want and saving money along the way.

These days it seems like everyone and their mother has the perfect idea for a t-shirt. If you browse Zazzle or another on-demand t-shirt site, you’ll see that some people actually do. And a lot more don’t.

In fact, most people who find out we have our own t-shirt line eventually tell us, “Hey, you know what you should do for a t-shirt? You should…” Sometimes they even come up with some good ideas. Plus, it sounds easy. Hey, just put that on a shirt and sell a million!

If you’ve tried to start your own apparel or t-shirt line and hit a big wall of this is way too expensive, I’m not surprised. It’s not as easy as it looks from the outside.

But wait! Here’s a sweet and tasty easysicle fresh out of the freezer for you.

Selling T-shirts the Easy Way

Sites like the aforementioned Zazzle do make it look easy, don’t they? You design it, they print and ship. That really is as easy as it gets. In fact, we recommend them all the time to people who just want to do a one-off shirt as a gag, or sell a few shirts for beer money. But hold on to your keg, because it’s not a good business model for your apparel line. It’s a great business model for Zazzle. We’ve had designs on Zazzle for years and we make a few bucks every month, without even trying very hard. It has its advantages, namely:

• Zero overhead – you don’t have to carry an inventory of shirts you may not sell
• Customers choose their own shirt and size from hundreds of options (see also no inventory)
• Complete order fulfillment - you don’t have to take orders or interact in any way
• Built-in SEO – you share the power of a larger website and its category, searching, and featured listings

Sounds amazing. So why shouldn’t anyone start an apparel line using Zazzle? It’s a dreamy hot fudge sundae with a million dollars on top! Before you get chocolate all over your chin, think about these disadvantages:

• If you price competitively (to make sales), you will bring in about $1.50 per shirt
• You can’t brand shirts with your private label
• You can’t control quality
• Stores won’t carry your line at those prices – you need to offer wholesale pricing

We think Zazzle and sites like it are great when you want to test designs and see if there’s a market. When you’re ready to get serious about starting a t-shirt line, you need to dig deeper into your ice cream truck and scoop your own cones.

Selling T-shirts the Hard Way

We get a few inquiries every month for our custom screen printing from people who want to start their own t-shirt line. They range from complete noobs testing the waters to seasoned entrepreneurs who regularly sell their shirts online and in local markets. The ratio of inquiries to printed orders for this category of customer is almost zero. The numero uno reason? Affordability.

We are usually not the cheapest screen printer around, but the issue has never been one of our prices being too high. The problem is one of sticker shock. Until they contact us, most people don’t have an idea how much they’re going to have to invest to get a viable inventory of t-shirts. I sympathize. This is a tough business. To successfully sell t-shirts, you have to order them in bulk (wholesale) so you can get them into the market at a competitive price and still profit enough to do it all over again. Here’s some simple t-shirt math for you.

Say you place an order for 20 t-shirts. For a screen printer, that’s a small order. Depending on the design, you could spend between $12-$18 per shirt. That means to sell them at a profit, you’ll have to sell them for anywhere between $18-$27. Now, if your shirts are super special, that might work in a local market or online. It doesn’t account for overhead on a booth or your web site (that counts), but you’ll make back your money on the shirts at least.

If you take your shirts to a local store, they’re not going to want to pay those prices. They’re going to get you down as low as possible so they can mark that up and sell the shirts for $15-$18. That is, if they’re super special and it’s a high end boutique, not a souvenir shop in Little Tokyo selling shirts at 3 for $10. So let’s back that price up to what you need to buy them at. If you can get those shirts at $6-$7 each, you might be able to get an order in at a local shop.

How do you get your custom shirt prices that low? You probably guessed already, but I’ll tell you anyway. You order a lot of them. Think in the hundreds, at least. Sounds like a big outlay, right? You betcha. That’s what makes the business tough.

You Can Still Start an Apparel Line

I know. It’s like your scoop of pickle pear pistachio just fell off your cone into the dirt. That’s how I feel every time I talk to someone who wants us to quote them on printing their t-shirt line. I feel your pain. But there is hope for all of us! You can still start your t-shirt line, you just need to think through a few things before you press the big phat go button. Figure out this stuff first:

• Where and to whom are you selling your t-shirts? This will help you figure your pricing, which determines your initial budget.
• Cull your designs down to the very, very best. Eliminate that iffy one your Facebook friend promised they would buy if you would do it.
• Choose a good quality shirt, but don’t get crazy. You want midrange. Not Michael’s on clearance and not Calvin Klein. Do your homework.
• Oh, yeah. Do your homework.
• Will you tag them? How? Is it even necessary? Can you do it yourself and still make it look professional? Get feedback on this.
• What do you need to spend initially to sell them? Think “easy” stuff like tables, banners, web site, payment methods. This stuff costs money and affects your profitability. It’s business 101 stuff, but you need to account for it.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Don’t listen to the critics (external and internal) who tell you it’s an impossible business to make any money in. It is possible. It takes time and persistence, for sure. If you plan well and start out early accounting for your costs and potential profits, you’ll make it work.

A huge autographed thank you from our customers, A Flock of Seagulls. You may have read about the trouble on their summer tour. Well, we can’t just leave them with that impression of Southern California, so we stepped up and printed their concert tees lickety split to keep up with them on the rest of their tour.

They were awesome to work with on their concert tees.

Thanks, guys!

¡Viva Hollywood! We just wrapped another live screen printing event, again with the beautiful people of the Topanga Film Institute. This was for the premiere of Duncan Bridgeman’s documentary Hecho en México at the John Anson Ford Theatre in Hollywood.

Thanks for having us at your screening, guys!

Here’s a short instagram video from the Ford Theatres peeps: Hecho en México screen printing

In fact, you should follow us on instagram, because we are all over it, (almost) all the time. Join our little party!

We were Sparky-on-the-spot, printing t-shirts and tote bags for guests before the screening. I think what they liked more than just getting a souvenir shirt was chatting with Jenni and me and watching us print the stuff right in front of them. It’s just one of those things that draws people in, like airbrushing or street performers. It’s fun showing people what we do and handing them a freshly printed t-shirt, hot (literally) off the press. Some people are more shy and watch from a distance, but eventually they move in for a closer look.

Plus, the people from Ford Theatres really know how to use social media and make it an interactive experience, which is nice to see. They were awesome.

The only downside is that we didn’t actually get to see the film because we were cleaning up our gear. But it will be in theaters November 30, and we will catch it then. ¡Hasta luego!

Imagine that you need a new car. Hey, maybe you really do. Anyway, imagine you’re out car shopping. Also imagine that you’re on a tight budget.

Well, you should be if you’re buying a car. I mean, really. Oh, wait. Are you Justin Bieber? Sorry, Biebs. Go ahead and splurge. In fact, get three.

If you’re just a regular person like me, you’re on a tight budget. And you’re environmentally conscious. Oh – and you have a small family. So it makes sense that you would seek out the priciest, gas-guzzlingest SUV you can find and see if you could somehow squeeze it into your tiny budget.

See what I did there?

Of course you wouldn’t do that, would you? No, because you’re not crazy or stupid. You know what you need, what you like and what you can afford, so you put that formula into your head before you go to the dealer.

This is exactly the same as getting custom t-shirts made. Except without cup holders and all-weather tires.

Getting custom t-shirts on a tight budget 101

We get a lot of inquiries about custom t-shirts that start with, “Hi, I need t-shirts. I have a 4-color design, front and back, I’m giving them away at our charity event. We’re a non-profit, so we have almost no budget at all. Can you give me a deal?”

Woa there, Biebs. Let’s back up. In fact, let’s go over this order piece by piece. But let’s do it backwards, because that’s the order in which our imaginary customer should actually be thinking about their needs.

Can you give me a deal?

Hmm. Of course. We give everyone a great deal. We do that by assessing your needs, then helping you decide the best way to go for your budget.

…we have almost no budget at all…

Well, we’re already in trouble, aren’t we? When I hear this, I sympathize. It’s really hard running a non-profit with a low budget. But since most print shops like ours are for profit (we have families to feed), we can’t donate our services to everyone who asks. We wouldn’t be around very long. What we can do is figure out how to get your custom t-shirts down to the lowest price possible. Which leads us to…

…I’m giving them away…

Oh boy. So much to say here. But I’ll sum it up as best I can. Listen, stop giving it all away. Even if you have a non-profit event, a great way to get some cash flowing is to sell merchandise. If you rely exclusively on donors and constantly give away their money in the form of giveaways, how much longer will they keep donating? The math is very simple. If you order 100 t-shirts at $6 each and sell them at your event for $15 each, you not only make your money back, you can now buy that new swing set in the children’s area. Non-profit means no profiting, not staying solvent. It’s still a business, right?

If you’re a for-profit marketer and you’re looking for a promotional giveaway, I totally get it. Let’s look at…

I have a 4-color design, front and back…

That’s great and we will happily screen print it for you. You’re looking at anywhere between $15-$25 each, depending on the type and quality of t-shirt you want. $2500 in marketing giveaways doesn’t sound like a tight promotional budget to me, but – wait. Is this Justin Bieber again? In that case, I recommend ordering 500 shirts to give away.

Simply put, you can’t ask for diamonds on a pizza budget. I would recommend:

• Reducing your design to one or two colors
• Printing on only one side
• Going to a full-color inkjet heat transfer (lesser quality, but still an option)

Diamonds on my pizza? Huh?

Okay, so I only concocted that weird analogy because I had my clip art folder open. And now I’m hungry.

My point is, being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you can’t get custom t-shirts printed. It means you have to think harder than your competition and come up with a smarter way of getting it done.

Want to know more?Leave a comment below or send me an email at [email protected].

Imagine that you need a new car. Hey, maybe you really do. Anyway, imagine you’re out car shopping. Also imagine that you’re on a tight budget.

Well, you should be if you’re buying a car. I mean, really. Oh, wait. Are you Justin Bieber? Sorry, Biebs. Go ahead and splurge. In fact, get three.

If you’re just a regular person like me, you’re on a tight budget. And you’re environmentally conscious. Oh – and you have a small family. So it makes sense that you would seek out the priciest, gas-guzzlingest SUV you can find and see if you could somehow squeeze it into your tiny budget.

See what I did there?

Of course you wouldn’t do that, would you? No, because you’re not crazy or stupid. You know what you need, what you like and what you can afford, so you put that formula into your head before you go to the dealer.

This is exactly the same as getting custom t-shirts made. Except without cup holders and all-weather tires.

Getting custom t-shirts on a tight budget 101

We get a lot of inquiries about custom t-shirts that start with, “Hi, I need t-shirts. I have a 4-color design, front and back, I’m giving them away at our charity event. We’re a non-profit, so we have almost no budget at all. Can you give me a deal?”

Woa there, Biebs. Let’s back up. In fact, let’s go over this order piece by piece. But let’s do it backwards, because that’s the order in which our imaginary customer should actually be thinking about their needs.

Can you give me a deal?

Hmm. Of course. We give everyone a great deal. We do that by assessing your needs, then helping you decide the best way to go for your budget.

…we have almost no budget at all…

Well, we’re already in trouble, aren’t we? When I hear this, I sympathize. It’s really hard running a non-profit with a low budget. But since most print shops like ours are for profit (we have families to feed), we can’t donate our services to everyone who asks. We wouldn’t be around very long. What we can do is figure out how to get your custom t-shirts down to the lowest price possible. Which leads us to…

…I’m giving them away…

Oh boy. So much to say here. But I’ll sum it up as best I can. Listen, stop giving it all away. Even if you have a non-profit event, a great way to get some cash flowing is to sell merchandise. If you rely exclusively on donors and constantly give away their money in the form of giveaways, how much longer will they keep donating? The math is very simple. If you order 100 t-shirts at $6 each and sell them at your event for $15 each, you not only make your money back, you can now buy that new swing set in the children’s area. Non-profit means no profiting, not staying solvent. It’s still a business, right?

If you’re a for-profit marketer and you’re looking for a promotional giveaway, I totally get it. Let’s look at…

I have a 4-color design, front and back…

That’s great and we will happily screen print it for you. You’re looking at anywhere between $15-$25 each, depending on the type and quality of t-shirt you want. $2500 in marketing giveaways doesn’t sound like a tight promotional budget to me, but – wait. Is this Justin Bieber again? In that case, I recommend ordering 500 shirts to give away.

Simply put, you can’t ask for diamonds on a pizza budget. I would recommend:

• Reducing your design to one or two colors
• Printing on only one side
• Going to a full-color inkjet heat transfer (lesser quality, but still an option)

Diamonds on my pizza? Huh?

Okay, so I only concocted that weird analogy because I had my clip art folder open. And now I’m hungry.

My point is, being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you can’t get custom t-shirts printed. It means you have to think harder than your competition and come up with a smarter way of getting it done.

Want to know more?Leave a comment below or send me an email at [email protected].

This past weekend, we were asked to do some live screen printing at the Topanga Film Festival for the guests. They could buy a “thrift” store t-shirt on a rack, buy one of our blank t-shirts, or whip off their own shirt (or jacket) and we would print the TFF coyote logo on it while they watched.

Yes, we were really hoping to see people strip in front of our press. Alas, only jackets and hoodies came off, even with the open bar happening. It did stimulate some pretty amazing conversations and we soon had a crowd formed around us.

The printing was very loose. Sometimes we printed over stains on people’s shirts, or on the lower back of a hoodie. Lots of experimentation was happening and the guests were really into the art side of it. Check out the short video below:

Next weekend we’ll be printing live at the Concerts on the Green in Woodland Hills. We’ll be at Warner Center Park from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM – bring a shirt, bring a friend, we’ll bring the ink!

Hands down, our most popular question.

How much do custom t-shirts cost?

If I could wish upon a star, I would wish that I had an easy answer for you. Really, I would. It would make life easier for both of us. The truth is, it depends. I know that’s slightly frustrating, because when you go to PF Chang’s or Jiffy Lube, the prices are always the same. Plus, they’re displayed right in front of you, so before you even talk to someone, you have an idea of how much you’re going to spend.

Unfortunately in the getting stuff made custom world, the prices aren’t so clearly defined. But there’s one simple answer to getting the best deal on custome printed t-shirts: communication. Yup. The more we know what you need, the more you will save.

We’ve had a booth at a summer concert series here in Woodland Hills, California. It’s been great. We’re selling some pre-printed tees and we’re also getting quite a few inquiries on custom printed t-shirts. The only problem is that because it’s a concert, we can’t hear a damn thing.

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: What?!???

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: Oh! Yeah, the restrooms are over there!

Visitor: No, I was wondering, HSKKKdJ t-shirts Dkdkkd kdllldlld custom lldllld;d how much?

You see my point. Not exactly a consultative environment. Which is where we excel, consulting. We’re not a factory that employs an entire third-world country and spits out t-shirts on a 24-hour cycle. We do custom, hand-printed work. So lots of little things matter when it comes to price. For example, the quality of t-shirt you need can change the cost of your order dramatically. Whether you’re selling them or giving them away will help us advise you on a best course of action. In short, we need information – without bass guitar in the background.

Unfortunately with custom stuff, like furniture or t-shirts, it’s not always the same. There’s a formula, sure, but it’s not like ordering from a menu. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be outrageously expensive, it just means you will need to plan better. Yup, That’s the secret to getting lower prices on custom work. Planning. It’s your new watchword.

Planning for your t-shirt printing means that you either know what you want or are ready to answer some questions about your needs. It’s pretty simple, really.

Here are some easy questions you can be prepared to answer so you can get the best t-shirts prices with us:

Where are your shirts going?

Are you selling your t-shirts or giving them away? The answer may not alter the price directly, but we would help you figure out how to either save the most money on give-away shirts or make the most profit on selling your shirts.

Think about it. If you’re selling your shirts at $15 each, and it costs you $6 to get them printed by us, that’s a $9 per-shirt profit margin. Not bad, right?

If you’re giving out logo shirts to employees to wear on the job or at events, that’s part of your advertising or marketing budget. Ask your tax advisor about that one, but you could potentially recoup that cost.

How many colors in your design?

This matters more than you might think. In true quality screen printing, each color equals a separate screen that needs to be produced. It’s not only the cost of the screen itself, or even the ink, but the labor involved in creating a screen. If you educate yourself about how that all works, you could save a bundle.

For example, let’s say you count 4 colors in your design. Let’s also say that one of them is blue. If you print on a blue t-shirt, you just eliminated one screen/ink color, making yours a 3-color design. Hence, saving you a little money.

So asking “How much would my t-shirts cost?” does not always net a black-and-white answer.

Alert: You will likely get lower prices from online sources. But they probably won’t help you save money by asking you those deeper questions. Click a button, get a price. It’s not how we roll.

How many t-shirts do you need?

People ask us all the time, “But don’t you get your t-shirts wholesale?”

Yes. But here’s a secret: the garment industry directly affects how much you pay for custom orders. The whole industry is set up on bulk. So if you only order one t-shirt, we have to get it from one of our wholesale vendors at a “per-shirt” cost. Which is not wholesale. And that price could be as much as twice the “case” price, which is truly wholesale.

Sure, we keep some blanks in stock. But we can’t possibly anticipate 100 Kelly Green t-shirts just for your St. Patrick’s Day Fun Run. We would quickly go out out business – and we would deserve to.

The best way to lower the price you pay on t-shirts is to know up front how many t-shirts you need and in what sizes. The more you order, the lower the “per-shirt” price goes. If you only need a handful of tees, we can still help you. At least we can advise you on alternatives to screen printing, which could be significantly less for small orders. The more information we have, the better price we can give you.

The other variable is labor. If we’re printing only one or two shirts, the time it takes for us to set up the job is more time than it takes to actually print ink on the tees. We have to do the same setup for 1,000 tees or just one.

Do you really have your design ready to go?

We don’t charge for design fees unless we actually do any designing. However, you should know what “designing” means. Yes?

We recently had a customer approach us with his design “all ready to go.” When we dug a little deeper, it turned out that he had ripped out a photo from a magazine to print on his shirt. In his mind, it was ready to print. In reality, we would have to:

• Scan the image
• Fix the quality (most magazine images are printed in a “dot” pattern that doesn’t translate easily)
• Separate the colors
• Add text and other elements

Not to mention that in this case, his image was copyrighted. That means that without written permission from the photograph copyright holder, we just won’t do it. It’s more than legal, it’s ethical for us.

In his mind, the design was all done for us. In reality, we had a couple hours’ design time to go, plus approvals and adjustments. It all counts.

What kind of t-shirts do you need?

High-end or low-end? It all depends on where your t-shirts will end up (Question #1 again).

For promotional giveaways, I would recommend t-shirts on the cheaper end. Say you’re a radio station and you’re handing out free tees at an event. Do you really want to hand out the latest fashion of pricey fashion shirts that will wind up in somebody’s gym bag for all eternity? I’m guessing not.

You’d probably want a heavier jersey-style tee that is super cheap to get. Remember: in the future, some dude is going to be polishing his $1,000 steel rims with that free tee.

If you want to sell your designs as an apparel line, you’re going to want the highest quality you can afford. Ask yourself if Nordstrom will honestly take your Hanes Beefy-T for their men’s section. If Wal-Mart is your customer, you might get away with it. The point is (I can’t stress this enough) to plan for it.

How soon do you need them?

Here’s an easy pricing scale for you:

I need them sometime in the next couple weeks = Lower price

NOW! I needed them yesterday but I just thought of it NOW! HELP! = Higher price

Those are the basics on pricing custom t-shirts. Remember, your watchword is planning. The better you plan, the more you save.

What questions do you have about getting custom t-shirts done? Is it still a mystery? ask us anything, either in the comments below or email us at [email protected].

Hands down, our most popular question.

How much do custom t-shirts cost?

If I could wish upon a star, I would wish that I had an easy answer for you. Really, I would. It would make life easier for both of us. The truth is, it depends. I know that’s slightly frustrating, because when you go to PF Chang’s or Jiffy Lube, the prices are always the same. Plus, they’re displayed right in front of you, so before you even talk to someone, you have an idea of how much you’re going to spend.

Unfortunately in the Getting Stuff Made Custom world, the prices aren’t so clearly defined. But there’s one simple answer to getting the best deal on custome printed t-shirts: communication. Yup. The more we know what you need, the more you will save.

We’ve had a booth at a summer concert series here in Woodland Hills, California. It’s been great. We’re selling some pre-printed tees and we’re also getting quite a few inquiries on custom printed t-shirts. The only problem is that because it’s a concert, we can’t hear a damn thing.

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: What?!???

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: Oh! Yeah, the restrooms are over there!

Visitor: No, I was wondering, HSKKKdJ t-shirts Dkdkkd kdllldlld custom lldllld;d how much?

You see my point. Not exactly a consultative environment. Which is where we excel, consulting. We’re not a factory that employs an entire third-world country and spits out t-shirts on a 24-hour cycle. We do custom, hand-printed work. So lots of little things matter when it comes to price. For example, the quality of t-shirt you need can change the cost of your order dramatically. Whether you’re selling them or giving them away will help us advise you on a best course of action. In short, we need information – without bass guitar in the background.

Unfortunately with custom stuff, like furniture or t-shirts, it’s not always the same. There’s a formula, sure, but it’s not like ordering from a menu. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be outrageously expensive, it just means you will need to plan better. Yup, That’s the secret to getting lower prices on custom work. Planning. It’s your new watchword.

Planning for your t-shirt printing means that you either know what you want or are ready to answer some questions about your needs. It’s pretty simple, really.

Here are some easy questions you can be prepared to answer so you can get the best t-shirts prices with us:

Where are your shirts going?

Are you selling your t-shirts or giving them away? The answer may not alter the price directly, but we would help you figure out how to either save the most money on give-away shirts or make the most profit on selling your shirts.

Think about it. If you’re selling your shirts at $15 each, and it costs you $6 to get them printed by us, that’s a $9 per-shirt profit margin. Not bad, right?

If you’re giving out logo shirts to employees to wear on the job or at events, that’s part of your advertising or marketing budget. Ask your tax advisor about that one, but you could potentially recoup that cost.

How many colors in your design?

This matters more than you might think. In true quality screen printing, each color equals a separate screen that needs to be produced. It’s not only the cost of the screen itself, or even the ink, but the labor involved in creating a screen. If you educate yourself about how that all works, you could save a bundle.

For example, let’s say you count 4 colors in your design. Let’s also say that one of them is blue. If you print on a blue t-shirt, you just eliminated one screen/ink color, making yours a 3-color design. Hence, saving you a little money.

So asking “How much would my t-shirts cost?” does not always net a black-and-white answer.

Alert: You will likely get lower prices from online sources. But they probably won’t help you save money by asking you those deeper questions. Click a button, get a price. It’s not how we roll.

How many t-shirts do you need?

People ask us all the time, “But don’t you get your t-shirts wholesale?”

Yes. But here’s a secret: the garment industry directly affects how much you pay for custom orders. The whole industry is set up on bulk. So if you only order one t-shirt, we have to get it from one of our wholesale vendors at a “per-shirt” cost. Which is not wholesale. And that price could be as much as twice the “case” price, which is truly wholesale.

Sure, we keep some blanks in stock. But we can’t possibly anticipate 100 Kelly Green t-shirts just for your St. Patrick’s Day Fun Run. We would quickly go out out business – and we would deserve to.

The best way to lower the price you pay on t-shirts is to know up front how many t-shirts you need and in what sizes. The more you order, the lower the “per-shirt” price goes. If you only need a handful of tees, we can still help you. At least we can advise you on alternatives to screen printing, which could be significantly less for small orders. The more information we have, the better price we can give you.

The other variable is labor. If we’re printing only one or two shirts, the time it takes for us to set up the job is more time than it takes to actually print ink on the tees. We have to do the same setup for 1,000 tees or just one.

Do you really have your design ready to go?

We don’t charge for design fees unless we actually do any designing. However, you should know what “designing” means. Yes?

We recently had a customer approach us with his design “all ready to go.” When we dug a little deeper, it turned out that he had ripped out a photo from a magazine to print on his shirt. In his mind, it was ready to print. In reality, we would have to:

• Scan the image
• Fix the quality (most magazine images are printed in a “dot” pattern that doesn’t translate easily)
• Separate the colors
• Add text and other elements

Not to mention that in this case, his image was copyrighted. That means that without written permission from the photograph copyright holder, we just won’t do it. It’s more than legal, it’s ethical for us.

In his mind, the design was all done for us. In reality, we had a couple hours’ design time to go, plus approvals and adjustments. It all counts.

What kind of t-shirts do you need?

High-end or low-end? It all depends on where your t-shirts will end up (Question #1 again).

For promotional giveaways, I would recommend t-shirts on the cheaper end. Say you’re a radio station and you’re handing out free tees at an event. Do you really want to hand out the latest fashion of pricey fashion shirts that will wind up in somebody’s gym bag for all eternity? I’m guessing not.

You’d probably want a heavier jersey-style tee that is super cheap to get. Remember: in the future, some dude is going to be polishing his $1,000 steel rims with that free tee.

If you want to sell your designs as an apparel line, you’re going to want the highest quality you can afford. Ask yourself if Nordstrom will honestly take your Hanes Beefy-T for their men’s section. If Wal-Mart is your customer, you might get away with it. The point is (I can’t stress this enough) to plan for it.

How soon do you need them?

Here’s an easy pricing scale for you:

I need them sometime in the next couple weeks = Lower price

NOW! I needed them yesterday but I just thought of it NOW! HELP! = Higher price

Those are the basics on pricing custom t-shirts. Remember, your watchword is planning. The better you plan, the more you save.

What questions do you have about getting custom t-shirts done? Is it still a mystery? ask us anything, either in the comments below or email us at [email protected].

Setting up at WorldFest 2013

Have you ever tried to juggle? If you have, you probably noticed that it’s not a skill you pick up quickly. Some of us take years to get it down because we don’t juggle very often.

One of the things you notice when you start juggling is that if you stop paying attention for more than a second, it all goes right to hell. Let your mind wander and… splat! Balls down. Or chainsaws down. Whatever, although I highly recommend learning with the balls.

Life running our screen printing business and family isn’t kind of like juggling, it’s exactly juggling. Pile on the dog, the cat, the car that needs repair (again), the usual grocery shopping, laundry, birthday planning, and two kids in a local production of Grease, and you are very quickly juggling chainsaws. Did I mention that we also homeschool?

Even if you don’t homeschool, if you have kids, you know. Am I right?

Bourbon helps. If you don’t drink, try Calm. I use both.

Last week we were super focused on WorldFest. Which went swimmingly, by the way. We got a such a great response from our customers there and afterwards that we stopped looking at the balls (chainsaws) for a week. Oops. We had a few surprises get thrown at us.

It’s all good. We have our health! But it’s been a challenging few days for us as we start thinking about the Concerts on the Green this summer. We’ll have a t-shirt booth there every Sunday for 13 weeks this summer. It’s gonna be awesome, yes. We have a lot to do, for sure.

Oh! I need to remember to get gas for the chainsaws.

If you’re in the LA area, check out the free summer concerts here in Woodland Hills. My personal favorites Lee Rocker and Robby Krieger will be there. Come say hi!

Woop-dee-do and yippy-kay-ayy, we’ll be at WorldFest this coming weekend!

So if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come out and join us on Sunday, May 19th. This is us officially inviting you to hang out in a beautiful park for a day listening to live music, sampling tons of vegan food, plus a beer and wine garden hosted by Lagunitas Brewing Company. Um, beer. Yes? Beer. Yes. The event is all about promoting health, environmental, humanitarian and animal welfare issues. No reason we can’t have some fun doing it!

Since we run an environmentally sustainable screen print shop – not to mention being vegan – we couldn’t think of a better way to participate than with our goofy vegan t-shirt designs. Naturally, we’ll be exhibiting our super soft vegan t-shirts at our booth. We’ll also have stickers, window decals, tote bags, and prizes to give away. So aside from the beer, food, and Ed Begley, Jr., you can score some very cool stuff from us!

We’ll also be educating people on what it means to run an environmentally-conscious business. Especially in the screen printing industry, there are a lot of chemicals that are used for preparing and cleaning screens. We only use drain safe, biodegradable, citrus and soy-based cleaners in our tiny little shop. There are a lot of things we plan to do as we grow (we’d love to be 100% solar-powered), and we’ll be learning about some options at WorldFest.

We hope to see you there!

David & Jenni

Here’s something to muddle over this week:

Is it possible to be passionate about a cause and keep a sense of humor about it?

While you ponder that with your own passionate beliefs, here’s our story. Jenni and I are both vegan. We care about things like animals being tortured and our water being polluted. While we’re at it, we’d love to see every person in the world have enough to eat.

Our efforts toward these causes are serious and dedicated. For example, here are just a few things we do:

• We eat a plant-based diet.
• We use environmentally-friendly products and practices in our screen print shop.
• We buy from companies that support our values and ideals
• We get involved with events and organizations that support the causes we believe in

In all of these activities, we interact with people who care about the same things we do. Some of these people are serious, too. Very serious. Very… very serious.

Here’s a quick self-check guide to see if you’re getting a little too serious about your cause:

• Have you ever thrown red paint on anyone (frat parties don’t count)?
• Have you ever crawled into a grocery store meat case and snuggled the packages, whispering, “You didn’t have to die for us?”
• Do you have any tattoos of Al Gore’s face? Anywhere?
• Have you angrily shouted the words “bone char” or “fracking” more than once this week?
• Do you get tweets from Alec Baldwin telling you to lighten up?

If you said “yes” to more than one of these, you may be too serious. And, you may actually be hurting the causes you’re trying to promote. For example, there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about rescuing animals from slaughter. If your end goal is to convince someone that slaughtering animals is wrong, getting up in their business with a few choice accusations probably isn’t going to do it. And they’ll go away convinced of only one thing: Those damn animal lovers are freaks, man. Message lost, mission unaccomplished.

I read somewhere that if you can get people to laugh, you have their attention. I read a lot of things “somewhere” and then forget the source.  It sure sounds like somebody said it. Lucille Ball? Dale Carnegie? Hannibal Lecter? Let’s say I made this up and move along.

Sometimes when people find out I’m vegan, I instantly become a target for teasing and animal rights jokes – not to mention dissecting my whole way of eating and thinking. I get it, I’m weird. If people realized truly how weird, they would forget about my diet. So it’s good that I have that to distract them.

In those situations where people are testing me, it would be easy to get angry and put up my dukes to defend myself and my cause. I could get all huffy (or Schwinn) and whine, “You just don’t understand the kind of evil the meat industry perpetrates! Your food is shit! You are gonna die! You’re assisting in the mass slaughter of cuddly critters and the careless destruction of the Earth, you non-caring animal-wearing meat whore!”

Instead, I answer questions and deflect “testing me” questions with humor. Then I let it go. It’s not that I’ve changed my beliefs or even hinted at agreeing with them. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And yes, I just advocated the use of honey for catching flies. Double-bad vegan-whammy to me on that one.

Surprisingly, what typically happens is that those testing people approach me when I’m alone and start asking more earnest questions about how to make vegan meals (which I then hand over to Jenni because I never remember how to cook anything).

When we decided to launch a line of vegan t-shirts and totes, it took a few months to sort out what the designs would be. My initial sketches all had some sort of serious “We are all one world” kind of message. Which is fine. I’m not knocking the sentiment. But jeez looweez, don’t we see that everywhere? After a while we get desensitized to the ubiquitous messages of love all, serve all. We start branding people who sport those messages by saying, “Those damn hippies again.” I’m guilty of this myself.

So we went the other way. We went the weird cartoon humor route by creating some goofy t-shirts. In fact, we even have a bacon shirt (a bacon-destroying video game). Plus, we’ve got more vegan and non-cause-related t-shirt designs on the drawing board. See? We’re so serious about our health, animals, and the Earth that we can’t help smiling about it.

I just got back after a long trip overseas. I took a look around the print shop, where all our equipment was patiently waiting for me. The squeegees were calling out, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Muffled t-shirt voices rumbled up from boxes of clean, blank apparel. Screens rattled and shook on the floor.

Welcome back, Sparky. Time to get printing.