Gettin' Busy!

So we're about halfway through and February is already trending to be our busiest month... EVER!

Just as we were starting to get comfortable... BAM! Orders start coming in waves. It's cool though, we're ready. We're making adjustments wherever necessary to make sure we keep cranking out your jobs on time and keeping quality high.

We're always happy to see you guys coming back to the shop and getting to know you on a first name basis. That's why we continue to keep an open door policy and we make sure to respond to your inquiries as quickly as possible. So as we wrap up this month, we hope to see you at the shop! Lots more stuff in the works as we grow. Stay tuned to see what we're up to!

Where Did January Go?

Hey guys!

Your friendly neighborhood Renegades here, and can you believe that it's already well into February? WTF right?

A lot of things happened this last month and downtown LA has been buzzin with activity. Lot's of people expressing themselves with printed materials (if you catch our drift). We're always happy to lend a hand to those who feel the need to wear their opinion on their shirt.

We have a feeling we'll be printing more stuff like this in the coming months. Stay tuned.

We also had a chance to get to ISS last month and check all the latest and greatest in garment decoration as well as taking in some seminars and classes to bone up on our skills. It was cool to see screen printers and other garment decorators from all over the country there in different capacities as well as some familiar faces. It was a very wet weekend but we managed to get a picture while it was nice and sunny out.

Hopefully we'll see some you at the next one. In the mean time, we have orders coming in what seems to be non-stop so if you need us, we'll be manning the presses making sure we crank out these jobs to make way for the new ones!!

The Price Is Wrong, Bitch!!

Printing sometimes can be really fun! We were hit up by a few friends to print their shirts for The Price Is Right. (everyone has to go at least once, right??). And, of course who else did they call than Print Renegades! (although our main focus is more about helping artists, start ups, restaurants, non profits and clothing brands, sometimes its fun to do something silly and fun).

The print was actually pretty complicated, a 4 color screen print WITH Foil (and only 10 pieces). Normally our minimum order of 10 pieces is for 1 or 2 color designs, but we made an exception from 25 pcs (3-4 color prints) to 10 pieces for these kids.

Printing with foil inside of a design, where not everything is getting foiled, is difficult because the ink around the part not being foiled has to be a different type of ink than the ink that is being foiled. Now, foil normally sticks to any oil based ink, so the ink around the foil design has to be either 1: Waterbased ink or 2: has to be ink with Foil-Resist additive in it...either of these things will allow the foil to stick ONLY to the oil-based plastisol ink and not to everything else.

And as you can see here, the final result looks pretty amazing!! AND you can see the shirts IN action, getting called up to the stage of the Price IS Right HERE. (pretty snazzy!!)
 

Reliance Umbrellas

Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. is a metal distributor in Los Angeles. The company started in the late 1930's in the postwar metal industry boom.  It was listed in Fortune's List of "Most Admired Companies". 

 Print Renegades was thrilled to work with a Los Angeles icon. The job: To screen print on patio umbrellas! This wasn't just a T-shirt one could thread and easily work on, this took time and thought. We had to be precise, working with that large of fabric. It took multiple people to make sure each umbrella was flawless. After the umbrella was printed, we had to fit it into our dryer. Making sure the fabric didn't scorch and the ink dried thoroughly. It was an exhausting job however, it's projects like these that make us love our jobs. We are always ecstatic to have new and interesting projects, where we can showcase our knowledge of the trade. 

The umbrellas turned out great. We hope Reliance can keep their employees and customers cool this summer! 

Stamina Nutrition Mylar Protein Powder Bag Printing

Stamina is a nutrition store based out of Los Angeles, helping people reach their fitness goals. They focus on top quality supplements free from growth hormones, artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners. Nothing but clean energy to fuel your body!
 
Stamina came in with a wonderful idea to screen print their supplement bags. The Print Renegades team was ready to take on this project. A two color print would normally be simple, however, printing on Mylar bags requires an intense and extremely intricate ink that bonds with the foil outside of the bag. (we tested 4 different types of enamel inks before taking on this job to make sure that we were using the correct ink that would never fade, wash off, scratch off or wear down over time). The other element here was the size of the text on the back of the bag: given that the text was extremely detailed, we had to be very meticulous to make sure every print was a success. 

The bags turned out great, not only will the goods inside help you reach your fitness goals, you'll be rocking a great hand screen printed bag while doing it! 

Westwood Music Sign Printing

Westwood Music is the local music store of the West LA area that has all of the small town local guitar shop feel with none of the corporate guitar shop feel. It might be a time warp back to the 1990s when you walk in, but there is no question that you get addressed by a REAL guitar player who knows about every single guitar hanging in that shop and loves what they do and isnt only there to sell sell sell.

WW Music needed some new signs for their store, so they called us to help them with out with getting better signage for their windows. We suggested printing on coroplast signs, since this corrugated plastic material is inexpensive, is durable and lasts thru years of sunlight (which is what their signs will be through sitting in a window for ages). We decided on 4 different signs, each with a different saying on one side and their logo on the other.

Not only is printing on coroplast difficult, as well as printing large format, but doing single sample signs is extremely time consuming and complex: all of which these signs required us to complete. We were able to cut these signs down from a larger plastic, then by using the specialized coroplast ink we could lay down a thick white print, and air dry them until they were ready for delivery. These signs now hang in the windows of Westwood with all their shiny, printed white glory! :)

Freshwata All Over Printing

Freshwata are tastemakers. Aside from their design and branding side of their business, they also focus on building and developing style for exhibits and social events. Freshwata were doing an event in San Diego and hit us up to help them with a very large and time consuming project: All Over Printing. This style of printing is usually done as a Dye Sublimiation process, but given that Freshwata wanted to have a few hundred of these done, it was cheaper and better for us to run these as standard discharge screen printing.

The shirts were standard Anvil 980 Fashion Fit tees. We then used a super large 160 mesh screen (roughly 58"x54" outside dimension) with Pro Discharge White discharge ink (mixed with the poly activator). This produced a bright white print while keeping the hand and feel of the ink very soft on the shirt AND making the print over the seams look much better than a standard plastisol ink would. (this is because the viscosity of this ink makes it easier to go over uneven areas, making them look less inconsistent and much cleaner than a heavier and thicker oil based ink would.)

Overall, printing AOP prints is extremely difficult, time consuming and costly but the overall final product is well worth all the work it takes to get the job finished. Even though we spend 16 straight hours on this job (and worked well into the morning on these), the result turned out well and we were very happy with the end result.

Nama Rococo Large Format Wallpaper Printing

Very recently we were able to work with Nama Rococo, a luxurious hand painted and hand printed large format wallpaper company that personally designs their own custom wall paper sets. These sets then get printed, in a limited number edition, and then sold by the individual sheet to whomever can handle this amazing look inside their abode.

Working with the owner, Karen, was amazing; to be able to see her unique style of pop art and Art Nouveau come right out of her designs. When they came to our studio, they brought the pre-cut paper sheets for us, and also their own ink that they wanted to use as well (since she hand makes it herself)...something that not many clients do.

We were able to print these sheets, although they ended up to be much bigger than we originally anticipated, and the final result turned out amazingly. The paper was very textured thick recycled paper, then turned black with a Gesso-type covering to seal the paper, which we printed their single color designs with white ink on the black paper.

These types of projects are exactly what Print Renegades exists for: custom made pieces, limited edition artwork, and a project that not only pushes the boundaries of standard screen printing but also gives us, as printers, a run for our money. Jobs like this make us much better at what we do and who we are, as professionals as much as artists.