The End of Another Year...

Hey Guys!

We know we know, it’s been a WHOLE YEAR, literally, since we’ve gotten a new post up on our blog but we’re looking to change that for 2017. Print Renegades has been growing and growing and we are SO busy (especially for the holidays) that posting on the blog has not been the priority that it should be. Now that we have a full time marketing and social media guy to assist in this, we will definitely be more up and out of our shells to bring you guys the new and improved Renegades!!

Since last December, we have expanded our team to include some new faces to keep production in our shop running like a well-oiled machine and to make sure we stay active on social media and the web. We’ve got a new kick-ass DTG printer, the Epson F2000, that we’ve definitely been putting through its paces these last 12 months and have got it running almost non-stop with our ever-growing job board for Direct-To-Garment print jobs.

Along with DTG business, screen print jobs have not slowed down a tick and we’re constantly pushing ourselves to work outside of our comfort zone from printing oversized flatstock to printing on materials we’ve never printed on before. Our aim is to always say YES! And as you might hear from our customers, we usually do!

Keep your eyes on this blog for a deeper dive into what we’ve been up to and what’s going on at Print Renegades in the future. We have a lot of new equipment were purchasing at the end of this year (tax breaks!!!) and another 1-2 employees we are currently trying to hire to be able to stay ahead of our job schedules, and were super excited to bring all of these new occurences to light coming in 2017. (its weird to write...wow!). Also, keep checking us out on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for more behind the scenes stuff! (we post on those more than once a year, we promise!) :)

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.

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!!

Fortress Social Club Custom Xmas Cards

Before Xmas, we had the pleasure to print custom Christmas Cards for the Fortress Social Club guys. This Los Angeles based ensemble of highly talented musicians is always on the cutting edge, and this year they really wanted to send out custom printed Xmas cards to all their fans. Shawn Harris threw out the idea last minute and we had to scramble to make it happen for them, but we love to come thru for like minded artistic individuals as ourselves, and here we did.

Because of the quick turnaround time, we decided to print these cards FOUR to a page to limit the number of paper cuts that were needed. Cutting paper perfectly (making sure the edges are even, etc) is time consuming and if we can just do 2 single cuts (center & center), that would speed things up, even if it meant printing a few more pages.

First we aligned up the film to the paper, to assure the print will be centered on the paper.

Then, taking the film and creating registration marks in order to get every single sheet lined up in exactly the same place is KEY. We usually use registration guides, except when the border is very close to the edge, which forces us to just use tape.

Next, Pantone ink mixing is the key to making any paper prints look amazing. 2 Pantone colors were given to us by FSC, which we custom mix with our Pantone Color Matching System (PMS) books.

Finally, were ready to start printing. Getting everything prepared before the ink gets printed into the mesh of the screen is key, since once you begin printing, the time clock begins and the ink starts immediately drying. We have to make sure we thought of everything before printing begins. On paper, each color must be printed separately, then dried and brought back for the other colors. Here, were printing the green color first:

After breaking down and cleaning the 1st screen, we align the 2nd screen, throw on the premixed RED ink, and print away!

Finally, the paper gets dried after a few hours...we then machine cut each sheet into 4 separate pieces, making 4 FINAL cards out of each printed sheet here.