Preppi Earthquake Prepardness Canvas Bags

We had the chance to work with a really unique job and a really unique company: Preppi. The bags were created out of the need for being prepared for an emergency...with style. These premium bags are hand assembled with a variety of select goods inside that come with the purchase of the bag: materials to which will help you during the first 72 hours of any major natural disaster.

The guys contacted us to help them print these bags. Because they recently had a really great write up in the New York Times, they were in demand and needed a few hundred of these in only a few days. We were able to come through and help them get these done.

The print was a jumbo 2 color print. The tricky thing with these was the alignment of them that needed to be absolutely perfect in order to not conflict with the position of the straps or the handle; but also so that they didn't fall off the edge of either side of the bag. This took us quite a bit of time to really perfect nailing the print location of these abnormally-shaped pieces of canvas, but once we got into the swing of things, they came out amazingly.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Merch

We were recently reunited with our old friends from New Community Management, the managers of many acts like Edward Sharpe, Bad Suns, The Wild Ones, Lia Ices, and many others. ESMZ have recently departed on a short leg tour, and they needed some much needed hoodies printed for that leg of their tour.

The hoodies were Alternative Apparel Eco Fleece hoodie. The hoodie itself is a poly/cotton blend hoody, so its not possible to print discharge inks onto the hoodie (as we would normally do with 100% cotton, for a client who wanted super soft inks on their garments) so we had to just use super soft plastisol inks in order to achieve this look. The coverage still had to be there (so you couldn't see the color of the garment thru they ink itself) but it still needed it to be soft.

AOF Metallic Gold Ink Tank Top Printing

Special Effects printing in Screen Printing is sometimes something of wonder. Its amazing to see the modern advances of science and ink research & development in today's day in age.

With 'Always Out Front', we have been working with these guys for years and years, and their brand has surprisingly evolved from a fixie bike crew to now a car racing crew. They build old cars, put mega-motors inside them and take them to the race track to see what their time will do in terms of speed.

They are always looking for something unique: nothing standard, but they always seem to have an "over the edge" mentality of the design and printing of their merch. I love that about screen printing, because clients like this keep us screen printers on our toes, making sure we are to our best potential and on our best foot always.

These are fashion fit tank tops, Tultex brand, with a single color print on the Front, Back and inside tags. This ink is metallic gold plastisol, printed thru a very low 110 mesh screen (so the metallic pieces can slip thru the small holes of the screen) and dried on our belt dryer with forced air (the only way to truly cure metallic inks) for 3 minutes under 320 degrees.

 

Wonderful Pistachios Camo Fabric Printing

We were able to do another small print run for a Wonderful Pistachios commercial (starring the one, the only Stephen Colbert) and this was slightly different from the last fabric print that we did for this same company. (Video can be seen HERE)

This print was still as lengthy, full sized printing on fabric, except this time it was a 3 color print. Much more time consuming. The process started out the same (building a pallet that big to print, making films and burning screens to fit that sized screen), but the registration and color matching was slightly different.

Overall, the prints turned out amazingly. As you can see here, and in the final video of our new "The Late Show with David Letterman" host replacement.

 

Glitter Ink Printing for Fun Society!

Fun Society Kids Clothing is a great start up clothing brand that focuses on the fun in a kids life, and the way that they can show that "fun" spirit as a design on a tshirt.

This last batch of samples that we made for them were very time intensive, labor heavy and customized to their specifications. As we were making them, we started to see their vision develop in front of our eyes.

For this batch, we used a very low mesh screen in order to print a pink Glitter ink onto the garments. Glitter printing is a special effects printing ink that can be used, but is difficult to get fine detail in the print. We didn't have any problem making these look great with the glitter print. They also got neck tag printing, and each got individually bagged and tagged WITH full color hang tags (that we also printed), so they are ready for the retail shelves immediately. Keep up the good work, guys!!

World Dodgeball Society Team Tshirts

Dodgeball. We all know its a movie with Ben Stiller, but a real sport that is actually played by young people on a weekly basis? With a crowd? And Sponsors? And tournaments? Yep, in Los Angeles, the World Dodgeball Society is run by dodgeball4ever.com, and they are a group of hardcore dodgeballers. Its serious, and they dont mess around when throwing that ball at each others faces. (pretty amazing to watch).

So, there are many divisions and teams, but we were able to print some team shirts for 3 of the team divisions (Los Feliz, Hollywood team, West Hollywood team) and when a team orders 150 shirts PER team, you know they aren't kidding around.

They originally requested standard fashion fit cotton tees, but we were able to let them in on the 50/50 blend secret, and were actually able to upgrade their shirts to the nicer blend tees for no additional charge (since they ordered so many). Now, these tshirt styles are somewhat newer to the market, and are made up of a polyester/cotton blend that is able to breathe better, wick sweat away better, dry your garment faster, and overall is a softer, thinner and better shirts for any and all things athletic. I know they were stoked to be able to get these shirts for the league instead of the 100% cotton ones.

RBLTG Tank Top Printing

The fashion industry is always a full season ahead of the rest of the world. This is shown through the biggest fashion trade show in the world, Magic/Pool/Project trade shows in Las Vegas, they happen twice a year (Feb and Aug) and each trade show is for the season that they are currently in but ONE YEAR ahead (Feb is the fall show, Aug is the spring show). This system requires independent brands to keep up with this by coming out very early with their lines to impress buyers.

As screen printers, because of this, we are usually printing tank tops in the dead winter, and long sleeved hoodies in the heat of summer. Some people who see this wonder "Who could possibly be ordering something so late", but this is due to the trends that are in place.

We recently printed some tank tops for a really rad Canadian brand, RBLTG, out of Regina Beach, Saskatchewan. Single color samples on white and black. We also individually folded and bagged each one before shipping to them. Keep up the good work, boys!!

Custom Printed Designer Tags

Sometimes even the most simple things take a lot of time and effort to perfect. Our friend, Shaina Mote, Women's fashion designer, extraordinaire, needed to re-up on her stockpile of printed custom tags for her new lines that she is sampling right now, and we were her go-to to get those done.

These tags were just strips of fabric, almost like edging or trim, but natural canvas style edging. She cuts it into strips and we print her custom tags right over top of them, then she is able to cut them and sew them directly into the garments when she produces her new lines. Its a really cheap and professional way for Shaina to get really nice custom tags made, and the way that we have developed printing them, its easy for us to churn out lots of these tags with minimal effort.

There are SO many ways to develop cheap and easy workarounds in the fashion world by using Screen printing as the medium, a way to avoid high minimums by other industries yet still keeping the quality as the highest priority!