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.

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.

Advertees always try to find the best process for the designs we are given, for one off designs and sampling we are using the direct to garment printing more and more. Screen printing is always our first choice on larger orders, but every now  and then we find cad cut vinyl is the only process we can use. For large areas of bright colour and clean edges it is the only cost effective option on orders of less than 10 items. The thing we do not like about heat pressed vinyl is the amount of plastic involved in the process. Direct to garment printers are excellent in this respect, as there is virtually no waste, and require no screens. We are hopeful the next couple of years will see direct to garment machines produce this kind of design on a sweatshirt at a similar quality, and with the rapid advances to date we are pretty sure this will be the case.

2011 update: one offs are no longer catered for by Advertees, and vinyl is only used in situations where nothing else is viable. Advertees are progressively working towards solutions which do not produce such a large amount of waste.

“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

And while we at Advertees are busy using our gold waterbased inks to print hoodies for a youth programme aimed at helping youngsters stay on the straight and narrow, our friends at The House of Thieves are using their gold ink and screen printing skills for promotion of pretty much the opposite.
Their collection of limited edition screen printed T shirts are selling out as fast as they can create them, and with good reason, these T shirts are quite different to anything on the market at the moment, original, stand out designs, that we wish were not so limited in number. You have to be quick if you like a design!

Another Sold Out House of Thieves T shirt.

Good waterbased binders are available for phosphorescent, glitter, gold and silver powders. We are presently using Grafco an Italian ink manufacturer who supply very good quality waterbased inks, binders and powders with which you can achieve a very wide range of special effects.

All of these powders require coarse screens, down to a 34 recommended for golds and glitters. Glow in the dark can be printed through a finer screen but we have found the better coverage you can achieve the better the glow. A good white underbase is also required, a fully opaque white is going to give the best results for glow in the dark ink, with a white plastisol underbase and binder this can create a very heavy print, there is a distinctly lighter feel to the water based opaque inks and binders.
There are alternatives for gold t shirt printing such as foil. Foil comes in the form of a vinyl which can be heatpressed to the garment, or a foil which can be applied over the top of a screen printed glue, these methods can achieve a fully mirrored effect, but these prints are more fragile than traditional screen prints. So using a binder and powder solution should give the print a longer life.

Spin bodyboarding have more hoodies printed to meet demand, we love these designs by Nancy Meaney. The bold colours work well and are a pleasure to work with.

A quick well done from Advertees to the nephew. After working very hard for the last couple of years on his portfolio Royzy has somehow managed to blag his way onto a really good course in animation at the Falmouth School of Art (I’m not sure if that is how it’s referred to these days) some of his work can be found at www.royzy.com and for such a young greenhorn I think its pretty good stuff, but there are thousands of T shirts to be folded, and a factory floor to be kept spotless throughout the summer before he gets to enjoy life at University.

T shirt printing

Om Padma specialise in yoga accessories, bright in colour and with bold use of graphics, these products are personally and, wherever possible, ethically sourced from around the globe.

Advertees are located just down the road from Om Padmas Cornwall base, and we are pleased to be screen printing some of their fair trade garments. We have used waterbased inks, discharge printing on to darker colours. The result is a very soft and very bright print. For more information about Om Padma visit the web site.

Airkraft are part of the Cornwall VW Village. With over 40 years of combined experience Matt Keene and Ben Lewis offer a show winning aircooled service without compromise. Catering for anything from a simple service to a full restoration of Bugs, Buses, Porsche and even aluminium coachbuilts in their fully equipped workshop.

screen printng on hoodies by Advertees