OT: Make your own T-Shirts

[Mofo Rising]

If you've got an inkjet printer, you can buy the iron on transfer paper and get to work.  Problem is, the image will only last through so many washings before it is completely gone.

I've been wanting to make my own t-shirts for years.  Someday I will have that dream "Gorilla Ontologist" shirt.  But for a good shirt, you probably want to go with silk screening, and who's got the time for that?

[Mofo Rising]

That disaster cliche line thread reminded me:

I absolutely need a t-shirt with the line "Back off, man.  I'm a scientist."  I haven't figured out what to put on the front, though.

[dean]

Mofo Rising wrote:

> That disaster cliche line thread reminded me:
>
> I absolutely need a t-shirt with the line "Back off, man.  I'm
> a scientist."  I haven't figured out what to put on the front,
> though.

You could just have that on the front, if you wanted maybe a picture of a beaker or something, though it would be much better with an appropriate funny picture or just the text.

As for my own Tshirt news, I bought some Iron on Transfers today, and a Tshirt to test it on.

The results were good [the transfer was great quality, let's see whether it lasts] but I goofed up in the position of the front picture [it's slightly low and a little crooked] but overall I'm pretty happy with the results [it's still wearable; it's not that bad!]

On a blue tshirt, with some light blue stripes on the arms and cuff [?]

The front has this:



And the back has this, just up the top near the neck:




I'm loving the old school 80's shows at the moment, and on a 'Thundercats rediscovery' binge I came across a few good pics that I thought would look good for a trial.

I think I've got 2, 3 tops left out of the prints I got, and I know I definitley want a crappy B-movies one.  I was thinking of a cool, yet crappy B-movie poster, any suggestions for favourites?  So far I've considered Evil Dead and Buckaroo Banzai [I quite like the poster for some reason] but am on the lookout for some truly great terrible movies.  

I'm also playing around with an anime-based one, probably Ghost in the shell/Laughing Man [I'm a big fan of Ghost in the Shell and Oshii/Shirow's work.]

And I still haven't decided on the 12 Monkeys one or any of the other suggestions I originally had, though if I chose the Evil Monkey pic from Family Guy I'd need a good quote to go with it.

[odinn7]

Mofo Rising wrote:

> That disaster cliche line thread reminded me:
>
> I absolutely need a t-shirt with the line "Back off, man.  I'm
> a scientist."  I haven't figured out what to put on the front,
> though.


Well, since the line is from Ghostbusters, why don't you take a pic from that?

[ThadC]

How about  la blue girl.

[Susan]

i wouldn't mind a shirt somehow incorporating General Zod and festivus....
Cafe express might be good. How do they transfer the images onto the shirt? Iron-ons can suck, they come off really easy and i wouldn't dare wash them

[odinn7]

Susan wrote:

> i wouldn't mind a shirt somehow incorporating General Zod and
> festivus....
> Cafe express might be good. How do they transfer the images
> onto the shirt? Iron-ons can suck, they come off really easy
> and i wouldn't dare wash them
>

Cafepress shirts are good quality. We have gotten 12 shirts from them almost a year ago and they are holding up really well with very minor fading. I don't know what they use to make the transfer but they hold up as well as any $14-16 shirt you could expect. We just turn them inside out before we wash them but we do this on all shirts with designs on them. My picture doesn't show it but they do printing in all colors. The mens shirts we have use the black writing and the womens shirts use mulit-colored writing and they all have a small design on the front too at no extra charge. The service is great and so is the product and I would highly recommend them.

[Susan]

Yeah - that's why I think cafe press transfers the stuff to the shirt via another method.
I always wished i could figure out the whole graphics aspect of it so i could open up my own shop there. I tried but i couldn't quite get the images right.

[odinn7]

Susan wrote:

> Yeah - that's why I think cafe press transfers the stuff to the
> shirt via another method.
> I always wished i could figure out the whole graphics aspect of
> it so i could open up my own shop there. I tried but i couldn't
> quite get the images right.
>

It's really not that hard. I was able to do it as I designed our shirts with no prior knowledge. Just work at it a little and it's really quite easy. It doesn't cost anything to do it so you've got nothing to lose.

[dean]

Ok so I'm endevouring to get the most out of these transfers, and as such I've struck a problem.

I've sorted out the designs [well they are just pictures I like but still] But I've hit a wall in terms of what one I would prefer since I don't have enough room for all of them.

So I'm looking for opinions out of the two last options I have to choose:

The First is the Bubba Ho Tep one displayed in the first post:




And the next is this one:





I like both, and will edit both slightly to fit in better with the whole Tshirt idea, but that's basically it.  I'm kind of agonizing over which one is the better one for a Tshirt, so I thought I'd ask for suggestions [telling me both are crap is also acceptable, as long as you give me another option!]

As for the rest, I'm going to use the Family Guy Evil Monkey one, slightly different to the one in the first post, the Laughing Man symbol from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex and

Oh and I should also mention I'm not going to do the 12 Monkeys one as the quality of the image wasn't good enough for what I was after!

So let me know which image is better so I can get cracking!  Thanks!

[dean]

Oh and Susan, that Tshirt site is pretty good.  Although I wasn't going to use it, I was pretty interested in just looking at the designs other people had come up with, and there's some creative and fun ones there.  Great stuff.



Post Edited (11-29-05 07:49)