Seeing Trails Bandana Printing

Hiking Group? Los Angeles? You wouldn't think those 2 things went together, seeing that there isn't many mountains in Los Angeles. Well the hiking group Seeing Trails has found a way to get around that. These guys make bi-weekly trips up to the San Gabriel Mountains to explore, hike, be together with friends and...well, See Trails! :)

They needed some bandanas. We created them. These bandanas not only got a pretty amazing and super unique dye wash (each one was pretty customized in and of itself) but we were also able to print their amazing logo large on the front of these bandanas.

Because these bandanas were going to be touching bare skin, we decided to use a very light waterbased ink made of charcoal. It is actually a very dark grey color and was best so there were no solvents or other harmful chemicals in any of the inks that we used here. 

Great work guys! Keep up the amazing trip!

Ommegang Umbrella Printing

One of the best parts of our job at Print Renegades is the ability we have to work with a vast mix of different projects and people. Most other print shops (in our eyes) basically do the same types of things everyday. Because we are always so open to taking on new and interesting projects, this gives us the ability to venture down a new and exciting road weekly (and what makes our print shop so unique).

Last week we had a chance to work with our old Belgian beer making friends, Ommegang. (we have printed for them before actually). They had a rush project that they needed help with, and we were able to assist them in making their dreams become a reality. They were doing a festival in Santa Monica and needed some umbrellas printing with their fancy logo on all 4 panels of each umbrella. This we had never done before, but we took it on and nailed it perfectly.

We used a specialized catalyst that we were able to mix into our standard ink to make it permanent on Nylon, and also makes it be able to endure outdoor weather on a more permanent basis. The print was a fairly simple one color design, and although measuring and making the print straight seemed to be the most complicated part of the job, they turned out pretty rad!

Bottoms up!!

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.

Plain White Steez Multicolor Printing!

We recently printed for a really dope Los Angeles brand called Plain White Steez. Most of these prints are printed with soft waterbased ink, which make the prints vibrant yet feel like its still part of the garment. One of them was printed digitally with our Brother GT-361 digital garment printer. With digital printing, we can print up to 256 Million Billion Zillion colors. Pretty unlimited. All tees are printed on American Apparel goods, Made in LA!

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.