J.Bones Hand Printed Literature Mailers

Shipping mailers are an essential way of making your brand or business look bigger than it actually is, while still staying on top of the branding game. As we have done for others in the past, shipping mailers printed with a personal brand logo on them is always a way to stand apart from the rest. This is something in the past that has been thought of as costing a lot of money to get done, AND with a very high minimum order. The way that we print all panels in a single print, we are able to do lower quantities for people AND keep the cost way down for each order.

Most recently we printed some literature mailers for J. Bones Clothing and they turned out amazingly. These 18x6x4 kraft mailers are printed on every panel of the box, with a single color print using solvent-free waterbased inks.

Hand Printed Postcard Wedding Invites

There are those who are OK with what is traditional. Sometimes a basic wedding is OK for people. Basic dress. Basic ceremony. Basic cake. Basic reception. Basic wedding invitations. For others, basic is far from what they envision for their special day. They go out on a limb, reach for the non-traditional, and sometimes really outshine others.

We had the opportunity to print some amazing wedding invites for the later. They had a great vision, one that went against the grain, was inventive, was forward thinking, yet served multiple purposes at once. Wedding invite, postcard style, scored and perforated, then folded making the final product 6" x 4". But, its like an according, when unfolded reveals 4 sections on each side, each with a different element of the wedding that needs to be communicated to the attendees.  Then the last page, perforated and tearable, is the RSVP card to mail back to them. All in one.

When exploring our options for this card, one of the limitations for us was printing super fine text with metallic ink. Most metallic inks have metallic pieces actually inside the ink, requiring them to be burned on lower mesh screens so the metal pieces can pass thru the holes of the screen. Lower mesh screens make it impossible to burn and keep fine detail in artwork. This was a concern, but we solved it.

We printed black French paper, custom cut at 17" x 6". 80 hand printed, limited edition pieces. We custom mixed the Permaset inks to the colors requested (White, Metallic Gold, Mint) and went to town on these. Once printed, we scored and perforated them, then folded for delivery. We were happy with the final product, and so were they! This is what happens when you think outside the box.

Punk Rock Hand Made Patches

For some, what is standard isn't good enough. That's what I realized when talking to the guys with Underground Alliance. Although these guys are a punk rock band, they naturally think outside the box of what is possible, and it really shows with what they are able to call "merch" for their band.

As we were talking about their band shirts for their upcoming show on the Warped Tour in LA, they asked what would happen if I printed as many different prints onto a Tshirt as we could, and then they could cut them out and use as patches. Wonderful idea!!

These turned out really cool, worked great for the style of their brand, and the best part was that it was so cheap because we chose to use a 3XL sized shirt to print these, and we were able to squeeze a lot of patches out of one single shirt, given its massive size.

 

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.

 

Margins Imprint Metallic Ink Moon Calendars 2015

The time is again upon us: the time where the moon calendar printing begins. We have had Jeremy at Margins as a customer for over 5 years now, and every single year his orders get larger and larger. A great sign of something that is successful!!

This year for the 2015 calendar run, he wanted to try some new things out. So, he asked us if we could start running some samples early (obviously, a few months into 2014 were already beginning to print calendars for the next year) so he really has a jump on things this year!

This post was to showcase the Gold Metallic ink prints. These prints were done on White and Black paper, and personally I thought black looked better but he really liked them on the white paper, but either way you look at it, Gold Metallic ink is amazing regardless of the paper color. Most metallic inks have larger metallic pieces inside the ink, limiting the mesh of screen that you can print through. (Jantex ink says to not print thru anything larger than an 86 mesh. Haha) And with the detail that is in the moon calendars, this would be impossible. We had to go with the Jacquard ink, which allowed us to print through a 200 mesh screen, still holding the detail of the moon calendar print yet still looks like the metallicy goodness that it is! Good work, Jeremy!!

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.