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This past Saturday morning the owner of a screen printing company was interviewing job applicants. He looked at the résumé of an applicant leaning on the opposite side of the table and said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, your employment history is a bit shocking. You’ve been fired from ten different screen shops!” “Yah, I know,” agreed . . . → Read More: What did you do this weekend? This is our weekly Friday feature for the industry’s artists and designers where we show cool or crazy ideas that you might not have seen yet. Obviously we are not suggesting that they should be copied, but often one creative idea will lead to another. This week we have a ventian blind design. The string is not a . . . → Read More: Contagious creativity. Determining the value of your work can be very puzzling and it needs to be thought through very carefully because it can make or break your textile screen printing business. Over the next few Thursdays we’ll be addressing the issue of pricing your product. There are a lot of elements to take into account in setting prices . . . → Read More: Starting out? A really BIG issue… how do you price your product? Another job for Ghostbusters. It starts with “ghosting” or “hazing” in your screens and then it can start doing funny things in your prints. We are referring to the feint images left in the mesh on a screen after it has been reclaimed. When these “ghost” images are not removed before the screen is re-used, we have . . . → Read More: Ghosts in your screens can become ghosts in your prints.
A Canadian screen printer was down south this weekend at the screen printing show. She was looking for a new press and wanted to see all the options. At one booth she listened to the salesman’s spiel and then asked him, “If you are selling these machines way under cost like you say that you are, how do you . . . → Read More: What did you do this weekend? Thanks to the Comic Relief Media Team in the UK for sending us the picture of Pixie Lott modelling the Vivienne Westwood designed t-shirt and for granting us permission to use it on our blog. And, get this, the picture was shot by Bryan Adams. This is all about a huge charitable campaign in the UK, Red Nose Day. . . . → Read More: Contagious creativity with Pixie Lott. Ordering supplies online is fast gaining popularity as a way to do business in Canada, and that includes the textile screen printing industry. By now we are becoming accustomed to online catalogues that provide us with the convenience of 24/7 access to ordering, technical support and product information. We also expect the better suppliers to share their online admin savings with us in the form of lower prices . . . → Read More: Starting out? Online services are not only convenient, but some also cut costs. Sooner or later most printers experience trouble with “ghost” images appearing on the back of dyed or dark garments. This happens most frequently when the print is a large white one printed with a low-bleed or bleed-resistant white ink. The immediate assumption is that the print has somehow penetrated all the way through the garment to the . . . → Read More: Need Ghostbusters? Are Canadian textile screen printers staying away from the trade shows and, if so, why? The only remaining large North American show with a significantly textile screen printing focus, the ISS Show in Long Beach, was apparently well attended this year, but not by Canadian textile printers. The SGIA show, which long ago lost its screen printing . . . → Read More: Here is a show and conference, but where are the textile screen printers? We don’t know what the owner of a large screen shop in Toronto (yes, there still are a few) did this weekend, but it put him in a foul mood. He came in this morning and decided that he was going to fire the first slacker that he saw. He walked through the print shop, checked the . . . → Read More: What did you do this weekend? This is our weekly Friday feature for the industry’s artists and designers where we show cool or crazy ideas that you might not have seen yet. Obviously we are not suggesting that they should be copied, but often one creative idea will lead to another. This week we have a shirt that was designed for the Dutch . . . → Read More: Contagious creativity. We’d suggest that you give serious consideration to including about $850.00 (only about $400.00 if you already have a digital scale) in your start-up budget for a small ink mixing kit. There is also a bigger start-up kit and, in time, you can build either of the kits into a mixing system as large as your growth requires it . . . → Read More: Starting out? Consider mixing your own colours. It is an interesting coincidence that the above illustration, which is really a graph of atrial fibrillation (a medical problem), is also a kind of microscopic depiction of textile fibrillation (a screen printing problem). Our topic is of course textile fibrillation, but we know of screen printers that have nearly had the medical type of fibrillation because of the . . . → Read More: Fibrillation, annoying but not necessarily fatal. About six years ago a customer stood at our front counter and amazed us with this folding trick. Even if you have seen it before, we think that it is worth seeing again. It is clever but we are not convinced that it is actually quicker than the traditional way of folding a t-shirt. So, if you are actually . . . → Read More: Revisiting an old trick. This past weekend a screen printer and a distributor got a break from the Canadian winter with a quick golfing trip to Florida. Standing at the first tee, they agreed to play the ball as it lay for the round. The distributor hit a beautiful tee shot 250 yards down the middle of the fairway. The screen printer was not so lucky, shanking his . . . → Read More: What did you do this weekend? This is our weekly Friday feature for the industry’s artists and designers where we show cool or crazy designs that you might not have seen yet. Obviously we are not suggesting that they should be copied, but often one creative idea will lead to another. We would like to give credit to the artist/designer/printer but all we have . . . → Read More: Contagious creativity. Here is that sales dude again with a start-up equipment deal “that you can’t refuse”. We also want you to start up in the textile screen printing business because we would like you to become a customer of our online service. BUT after more than 20 years of seeing screen printer start-ups come and go, it would be irresponsible . . . → Read More: Starting out? Could be a great idea, but check out the warm and fuzzies. We serve Central and Eastern Canada, but if you are in the West, anything you see on our site is available from the Calgary office of Stanley’s Sign and Screen Supply. In fact, you can order online from screenflex.ca and Stanley’s will ship to you from Calgary, usually the same day. They can colour match, mix . . . → Read More: Screen printing in Saskatchewan, Alberta or BC? Just because it is technologically possible, doesn’t mean that it is economically viable. – Einstein Anonymous. Okay, so we can’t claim that Einstein said that, but we would bet that if he were here today and involved in textile screen printing, it is the kind of wisdom that we would expect from him. He would of course be refering . . . → Read More: We have the technology… but can it make money? |
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