One step closer

I picked up the screens today and this weekend I'll be grabbing the fabric for the bandanas and the shirt tags for some pure action printing radness. To keep costs down but still put some personal touches on the clothing I'll be hand screening labels to be sewn into the back of the shirts, rather than have the generic tags that they come with, it's better than nothing right? Until I'm rolling in the cash it'll have to do. I'll also be using the logo screen (the smaller of the two) to make repeating pattern/yardage of the logo to use on some wrapping/packaging to give it another profesh touch. The bandanas will be printed on fabric I'll rip to size, then hem the edges so they don't look all ratty, Sonia is gonna help me with that because I don't think I've ever really used a sewing machine for the purpose of not evil, so you don't have to worry about the quality. All the screens were made by the awesome folks at Peter Leis Ltd so if you ever need anything done in regards to screens hit them up, they'll take care of you.

As mentioned before I've finally got the shirts done and dusted (well the printing anyway) and have a nice big box full of them, all that's left now is to print and then sew in the new tags and print and attach the swing tags and ship those babies out! I'm really happy with the shirts themselves as they are Fruit of the Loom and have an awesome cut and are made from really good cotton, I've got 2 Fruit of the Loom shirts, one being about 4 years old that I still wear regularly (it's a Converge shirt, wouldn't you wear it every second day?) and it hasn't got all stretched out of shape or faded at all so I knew that's the brand I wanted to print on. If it's one thing I hate it's shirts that feel like they're made out of fuckin' cling wrap or something, If I pay for a shirt I want it to last more than 1 wash dammit, so it took me a while to find a supplier that stocked Fruit of the Loom at a decent price. Another cost cutting measure I'm gonna take is to get a rubber stamp made of the logo (the same on the header of this blog) and cut up some cardboard and just stamp each one, alot easier than worrying about getting it all professionally printed and cut, and gives it a much more handmade, personal feel. Even though this is the guinea pig first run I want to do as much as I can on a personal level to give people who buy the stuff their moneys worth and do it right as a kind of thank you for helping me out on this futile venture by buying something.

The main hurdle I'm facing is money, I know it seems pretty obvious but it takes an awful lot of cash to get things like this moving, I'm not made of money either so I've been budgeting pretty hard to put away dollaz every week to put towards something each time. If I had a bottomless pit full of cash then I would have put this all together 3 years ago, but life gets in the way. That's the main reason it seems like this is rolling at a bit of a lumbering pace, I gotta pay dem bills as well, and even though I would much rather be playing Crysis 2 or partying like it's the end of an era every night I think it's probably a better idea to do something a bit more worthwhile... like make stupid tshirts. Whatever.

Sooooo once I get fabrics this weekend and start printing I'll put up some juicy process shots to whet your appetite for destruction and let you know how things are rolling along.

Cheers
Roh