‘Not only are standard polyurethane/polyester boards made from petrochemicals, but the production of them releases incredibly harmful chemicals into the environment. Put this with their typical lifespan and it is clear that there is definite room for improvement on how boards are made.‘

It looks like the James Otter approach to this problem has been without compromise in all repects, the finished boards look amazing and have now been thoroughly tested on our Cornish coastline. In addition to producing an incredible product there is (at the time of writing) an invitation to the customer to be a part of the creation process. In my opinion it would be well worth making the most of this opportunity.

I would like to think that one day I might get to own one myself, although this would require finding the time to use it, getting back in the water again is high on the agenda but screen printing, right now, seems to be taking up every waking moment. Speaking of which the T shirts….

An obvious choice, Earth positive Organic T shirts screen printed using water based inks. Only the best for Otter Surfboards.

It is always suprising how much activity is going on in your back garden, wildlife is busy going about its business quite often unnoticed. We have just completed some promotional T-shirts for Handykam who offer  every solution imaginable for keeping  an eye on what is going on in your back yard. Nest box cameras can reveal a whole other world happening right under your nose which we are often much too busy to take notice of.

In addition to nest boxes there are systems for observing bats (we have a few of these here at Advertees) and hedgehogs. Big brother for your garden if you like.

Our larger domestic type birds obviously don’t require such discreet devices to catch the action, they will pose for cameras at every opportunity. Pictured here loving this seasons monster sunflowers Muriel and Louise make sure we photograph their best side.

Unfortunately for Advertees a consequence of this event is that we lose a highly valued member of staff for the duration. Our genius admin (who keeps everything here running in an orderly fashion) will be camped out at the Festival, no doubt enjoying everything the Elephant Fayre has to offer, and this could mean our efficiency levels for Friday this week and Monday next, could be effected. And while Admin take a wild swim, watch bands, films, talks and readings, we will do our upmost to leave desks, computers and phones exactly as we found them.

Tickets are still available at the gate, and we, or rather admin@advertees, can vouch for the pure magic of this festival.

And of course, don’t forget to take a look at the beautiful T shirts, a simple yet  extremely effective design. and soft feel water based screen printing as pictured top.

Friday to Sunday, 13-15 November in Falmouth

As well as showcasing Cornish shorts, the festival will include National and international Film past and present, professional workshops and lectures.

Feature Films include the classic Eraserhead, and a south west premiere of Glorious 39 from Stephen Poliakoff, there are a number of short films on offer too, and Board shorts is taking place at the Stannary Bar Tremough for all those interested in UK surf film.

Thanks to EDT Services for making a very quick job of removing our partition spilling very little dust in the process, obviously the last thing we need in our workshops is dust. EDT were very helpful in working weekends and evenings creating minimal disruption to our output. With the wall removed we were able to start bringing in the TAS (T-shirt printing machine) piece by piece.

The  base of the machine could have been separated into 2 pieces for easier transportation, but it was left as one to save time re-assembling the machine, this was an extremely heavy piece of  machinery and would be nearly impossible to man-handle into the workshops, with a little help from Acland who are conveniently just around the corner it was popped through our doors on the front of their JCB loadall with no problem at all. Experience has taught us it is simply not worth trying to manhandle heavy objects when you have an extremely helpful plant hire company on your doorstep.

With the TAS fully assembled and in place we are supposed to be back up to speed, but as with all new things there is a lot to learn, we are already finding certain simple features on the TAS make huge time savings. Operation is simple and registration is accurate, so it is now just a case of fine tuning our print / flood speeds and pressures. With 2 autos up and running we should now be able to proceed without any major changes for some time, allowing us to concentrate on quality and production. There are still many new things to try out in relation to water based inks and screen/stencil production.

We now hope to find time for improvements to the Advertees website, introducing some new products (for 2010) and special offers on T-shirt printing in particular. We should be writing more blog posts too, in an effort to keep you informed of any developments to our screen printing abilities. Two months without writing a post is way to long.

Every now and then we come across T-shirt prints which have all the qualities we like, water-based printing is a must, good design for screen print is another plus.

T shirts which are organic, or at least sweat shop free are always good. The T shirts featured tick all these boxes, a promotion for a UK tour of, The Present, a new Thomas Campbell film. The follow up to surf films Sprout, and The Seedling  covers West Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Sumatra, Java, Hawaii and California. For more information about the film and the venues visit thesurfscreen.com.

Looking at the featured surfers and locations this is probably going to be another classic, we can’t wait to see it.

The tour dates and venues are:

* Wednesday 22nd April  The Royal Cinema, St Ives
* Saturday 25th April The Sallis Beeney Theatre, Brighton
* Friday 1st May  The Carnmarth Hotel, Newquay
* Saturday 2nd May Woodlane Theatre, Falmouth
* Saturday 9th May The Lighthouse Centre, Poole
* Sunday 10th May The Cube Cinema, Bristol
* Saturday 16th May Braunton Village Hall, Braunton
* Sunday 17th May  The Reel Cinema, Kingsbridge
* Saturday 23rd May St Merryn Village Hall, St Merryn

The weather has been glorious, we have finally turned the corner, when the sun comes out you can feel summer is on the way. The chickens here at Advertees are loving it, unfortunately I am not getting out in it at all. Next week should see Royzy putting in some hours, a much needed helping hand. The automatic T-shirt printer is great to use when you have a student to clean up the screens and squeeges.

Another cover shot from surftwisted photographer Tony Plant. Taken in the dead of winter on the south coast in freezing temperatures, Tonys commitment to photography from the water paid off. Take a look at the surftwisted web site for more surf photography from around the cornish coast.

A nice colourful design came through this week for Celefest. Initially this job was more than 6 colours, a little reworking made the design more affordable but had little effect on the impact of the design. Printed entirely in opaque water based inks, the colours were all underbased with yellow, as there is no white in the design. Curing a waterbase print like this is no easy matter, especially when printing hoodies as more ink is put down, so we gave the finished design a little heat pressing to make sure.

How often do we see this in Cornwall? It will be a slow start to the day with our staff scattered about Cornwalls minor roads. Our admin has decided to take a walk into work this morning (five miles) I hasten to add this was not my suggestion, and the reward should be some amazing scenery. Our designer is more remote a little beyond walking distance and opted to wait a while before attempting to drive. The chickens seem ok with it, a little slower out of the house this morning. This will be our small contribution to the reported 1.2 billion pound cost to the economy each day we have snow on the ground.

Photography by Tony Plant

The last few days have been the coldest we can remember. After a well earned rest over the Christmas period we were all keen to leap into action and set about tackling our already growing list of screen printing jobs, however,  we were soon to realise that very little could be done without our water supply. Here are 5 good reasons no screen printer should be without a good water supply and well insulated pipes.

1. Tea and coffee.

   Nearly every member of the Advertees team has a tea or coffee requirement, in order to achieve maximum efficiency the supply needs to be maintained.

2. Washing out screen stencils.

   It is impossible to wash out stencils without water, borrowed water in a container can sort out the tea and coffee crisis, but will not help in making a good silk screen stencil.

3. Reclaiming used screens.

   Again, this is an impossible task when you do not have the use of a good pressure washer.

4. Washing ink from screens.

   Although not ideal, water from a bucket can do the job, although I would not recommend it, you may also resort to plastic inks which can be washed out with various toxic screen washes.

5. Afternoon Tea.

   Previously assumed as a workers right, this is now a cherished moment, all water is used sparingly throughout the day to ensure this ritual goes uninterrupted.

These temperatures are unheard of in this part of the world, it has been an interesting 2 days. We are fully operational again with a new found respect for our water supply, full steam ahead and we should catch up on our orders in no time.

The most simple T shirt designs are often the most effective, I love Kernow T shirts are a good example of this. A timeless design that utilises White T shirts, simple printing in two colours, with a clear message. Easy.

Waterbased t shirt printing by Advertees

Om Padma of Cornwall produce a nice line in Yoga tops, a print run of fairly traded hoodies printed using waterbased ink. The brightly coloured hoodies are printed using an opaque water based screen printing ink which is 90% bio degradable, the pigments used to create these vivid colours are too strong to enable the discharge printing method. The hoodies are organic cotton in conversion from epona who also produce a good range of fair trade T shirts.

Christmas is now getting closer, and as it does the food industry goes into overdrive. This year we have been very fortunate to recieve chocolate in thanks for our T shirt printing, the above photograph is of a partly decimated box of organic handmade chocolate which had to be wrestled from staff for the benefit of this blog. This organic handmade chocolate is highly recommended by the Advertees team many of whom will be making the journey to St Ives to make purchases in the very near future.
We were also treated to the most amazing cornish fruitcake a photo of which had to be taken from the cornish fruitcake companies own web site, as I was too slow with the camera, staff polished off this treat in record time. Another 10 out of 10 from Advertees staff.

This years Screen Actions, is a two day event for young people, combining workshops, screenings and partys, last year saw 300 young people take part from schools all over Cornwall.

Board shorts is the Festival’s board sports film event, held at the Sandsifter Bar in Gwithian on the 8th November. As well as screenings there will be live music from Mark Kermode’s skiffle band The Dodge Brothers and local DJs Sir Vinyl of the Fattest.

This is a great event and although I am unable to make any of the screenings this year, we were fortunate enough to be able to supply some printed organic T shirts, we used water based screen printing inks for all the designs. The designs were created by A-Side a graphic design and illustration studio based in Falmouth Cornwall.

Suftwisted are in the process of a radical change, an interesting site is threatening to emerge from twisted towers in the very near future. The killer site is going to take bevel, emboss and shadow photoshop filters to the next level, no text or photograph will be left untouched.

In depth profiles of team riders can be found at the site already if you are willing to take the time to find them, but no sign of any merchandise for sale so far, the twisted merchandise is becoming very exclusive kit, and as a result the price is being driven sky high.

2011 update: Surtwisted remains in limbo, merch as illusive as ever, Tont Plant currently in Sumatra meditating on what the next incarnation will be. Can’t wait to find out what it is.

Usually after a busy summer we are able to find time to get organised, and tidy up a little, but this October has been hectic. We have printed many more T shirts than we did last October and in the current economic climate we are very pleased to be doing good business. So we have struggled to find time for the removal of timber, together with its woodworm, from the barn adjacent to the workshops, but somehow we managed an early bonfire and hopefully the erradication of the woodworm.
This month also sees a change to the blog, we have been using the free Arthemia theme for a couple of months now, and we are so pleased with the over all user friendly interface and clean layout we have decided to upgrade T shirt printing Cornwall to the premium theme, and so far it is looking good, Michael Jubel Hutagalung has created an excellent premium wordpress theme with a number of improvements on the free version. There was no dramas with the installation, and configuration of the thumbnails is now taken care of by the theme. The administration panel will help those who have no idea about PHP. We found only minor tweaks with the style sheet were needed to get exactly what we want, as the simple clean layout is very hard to fault. Now all we need to do is create some video for some added interest.

You can visit the twisted blog and have a go at name this spot Competitions, which are run on a semi regular basis, or even enter the tri annual shelf fest if you feel up to it. Better still, buy yourself a surftwisted T shirt! If you can figure out a way to purchase the Twisted merch, there is presently no online shop or retail outlet, you will need to track down Tony Plant, and if you are lucky, he will give you a screen printed organic T shirt in return for some cash. Good luck if you choose to pursue this.

“The Number One Cornish clothing label” The Rebus Collective release new Screen printed T shirts and Hoodies. Rebus love their Graffiti, Hip Hop and street clothing. This collective of DJ’s, artists and writers are responsible for some seriously interesting happenings in Cornwall, the likes of which we have rarely seen before. Beat boxes, break dancing and graffiti alive and kicking in Cornwall.

Hoodies printing

We are keen to have answers, but I guess by the time the reasons become clear we won’t care anymore, we will be wondering how on earth the next trend evolved. Chicken, egg, egg, chicken, speaking of which the Advertees chickens were treated to some broccoli, some not so nice cheese, and a big house clean this weekend. Are there any T shirt printers out there are experiencing similar trends? Is there anyone who knows the reason for the gold fever?

The word in the hen house “there is more crap cheese on the way.”