Spare Brains Games shirts

[thewayne]

I wanted to get three t-shirts made for the convention in two weeks. Last night I stayed up late working on the designs because I knew I'd be near the shirt place today. So I stop at the shirt place. Turns out that to do three shirts, they'd have to do five screens at $20 a shot if I wanted multiple colors. If I didn't want multi-colors, they'd still have to do four. Add to this the cost of the shirts and the fact that the shirts will have stuff on both sides, and I'm looking at probably $150+.

Now, if I were setting these shirts up to be able to ultimately sell them, i.e. if I had a chance of recouping that set-up fee for the screens, that would be one thing. But I'm not. These are pretty much one-shot shirts.

So I stopped at Walmart and bought some Avery t-shirt transfer stuff and a bunch of t-shirts, I'll experiment over the weekend and see if I can do iron-on transfers that will be good enough.

*sigh*

Comments

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Find someplace that does dye-sublimation transfer. The color's pretty near permanent (as in, pour on bleach permanent) and the cost is the same per shirt no matter the color. The one drawback is that the shirts have to be more-or-less synthetic, as the dyes won't bond to cotton.

I know someone who has a dye-sublimation printer and a heat press, and he told me that he had no idea what the cost would be per shirt, as the coffee mug and tile business is more common with dye sublimation. It would be far, far less that $50+ a shirt, though. At worst they'd probably be $30, with the printer providing the shirt. Your mileage will certainly vary from person to person, though.

Spare Brains (http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?booklore)? How useful.

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

Something to keep in mind is that iron-on transfers don't breathe, so it will make the t-shirts much more uncomfortable in the Phoenix summer heat.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I'm checking out a place called tshirts.com, if they can do double-sided shirts, I'll be ordering through them. Apparently they're not transfers.

[deborak]

You might also check out zazzle.com

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I returned the stuff that I bought to Walmart before going in to work today.