Before we get to this weeks Pimpashirt Creation…we come to you with a special announcement. You may have noticed that one of the Pimpashirt emcees has been missing from our videos….that emcee is one of Pimpashirt’s originator’s Josh Ellsworth. Josh leaves the Pimpashirt crew on great terms and has accepted a new job with Stahls’.
Josh – Congratulations and best of luck and thanks for your contributions to Pimpashirt.com!
On with the show…so this week we bring to you another Pimpashirt original. Our distessed design was very well received, so we decided to give our viewers another option with this type of look.
This week features a method that we introduced a while back…the adhesive residue technique. If you remember, this is acheived by hot peeling a cold peel heat transfer material. We decided to take this technique a step further by allowing a portion of the design to set in to allow some of the material to stick to the shirt. What you get is an adhesive residue, but also some of the material will bond with the shirt giving it a really PIMP distressed look…check it out.
Happy Monday to everyone! I would like to start by saying thank you for all of your favorable responses to last week’s post on the distressed look with film. We appreciate all of the positive comments, questions, and interest. We will do our best to keep bringing you similar types of design techniques for you to use.
This week we created what I like to call the “Superman…unzipped” . Basically this technique is made by layering films to create the look of a shirt on top of another shirt, sort of like the tuxedo shirt idea. In this example we used some Eco Film to create a basic superman logo, then layered some on top of it to look like a zipper. Finishing it off, we added some nice chrome metallic film to give the zipper a 3d and authentic look…creating a shirt inside of another shirt! I think it’s a pretty cool idea because you create the look that a lot of people like to wear like a hoodie, vest, or jacket on the outside with a shirt underneath showing through.
I hope you liked this week’s pimp-a-shirt and gong-ing! Please share your comments and questions…c ya next week.
Welcome to this week’s edition of PimpAShirt. This week we decided to show you a technique that is very popular with clothing today. The distressed look. Typically, this is done with screenprinting and is done with a special font that will leave areas of the design unprinted… i.e – no ink. The result is a garment that looks like it has been “worn” or “destroyed”. This is a very popular theme with clothing companies like Abercrombie, American Eagle and others. This look can also be applied using embroidery and applique.
It’s very easy to take this concept and do the same thing screen printers do. All you need is some Eco Film, or another heat applied film that is very easy to weed and a distressed look font. The one that we used this week was called Dirt2SoulStalker. You can search the internet for others, but we found this one at dirt2.com. We used this techinque with the white pimpashirt and 2010 on the garment. Basically the technique is to apply this font to your text or design, and it will put several cuts in the design that you will later weed away, the effect will be a random distressed look!
Check out the video>
Remember, don’t limit yourself to the ordinary. Take your equipment and do some out of the box and truly unique decoration. That’s what PimpAShirt is all about. If you’d like to download this free font, it is in our “box”.
So many of you may think that using a vinyl cutter or print & cut machine is just for your run of the mill t-shirt or uniform. Well, you’d be wrong! The fact that the material available on both the cuttable and digital side of things has advanced so much, these decoration methods are well suited to decorate the finest garments. In addition to t-shirts and uniforms, you can easily decorate Under Armour apparel, Nike Dri Fit, and many other examples of corporate apparel and performance wear. You can even decorate elegant tuxedos….like we did this week.
No…not a real tuxedo, but a tuxedo t! We started with black Eco Film for the lapel, and added some Electric Red for a boutonnière, and green Foil for a dollar sign to show a “pimped” tuxedo…perfect for any formally informal event!
The point of this week’s video is to open your mind to all the things possible with your vinyl cutter and print and cut machine. Upscale decoration is truly possible, and in most cases these methods are the best way. Corporate apparel on polos , button down shirts, expensive jackets and performance wear. Due to the fact that we have material that will apply to nearly any fabric, sometimes this is the only method available, but it’s definitely one of the best. Don’t be afraid to decorate those expensive upscale garments….and make yourself a tuxedo shirt…they’re fun!
This week we “pimped” a bag! Polypropylene bag to be exact, with a one color design on one side and a full color design on the other. In fact, we even used a hunter green colored bag!
Poly Pro bags are one of the latest trends in the promotional products market. They are lightweight, sturdy, and cost-effective. The best thing is that they are essentially composed of recycled plastic, like pop bottles. By choosing them, you can promote your business or cause cost effectively AND use an environmentally friendly recycled product. There are even several choices for decoration materials to make it very easy for you.
The first design we used was a simple recycle logo with some text. We chose to use our Spectra Eco Film and Roland GX-24 vinyl cutter. Eco Film is soft, thin and composed of polyurethane instead of PVC. It also passes the Ökeo-Tex 100 certification. The Ökeo-Tex Standard 100 is a certification for companies requiring among other things compliance with specified criteria for avoiding or limiting the use of harmful substances in production. It is perfect for one or two color decoration, and applies at a low 270 degree temperature.
Next, we applied a full color logo onto the back of the bag. This design was produced using a Roland Versacamm and our Spectra Solar Print Media. The nice thing about this media is that it is specifically designed for application onto heat sensitive materials. It applies at only 212 degrees! That makes it perfect for poly propylene bags and heat sensitive fabrics. Another great option is our Colorprint II, which can be applied at a low 270 degree temperature. This material, which is used with the Versacamm to produce full color graphics, is also PU based and safer for the environment. The ink we utilized is Roland’s Eco Sol Max, which has harmful chemicals taken out so you don’t need to worry about breathing fumes like you do with some machines and ink systems. It’s the perfect complement to our green efforts!
These days it is becoming very easy to go green with your decoration. There is an increasingly large offering of green products out there from organic t-shirts to poly pro bags and eco-friendly ink. To go along with them, reputable media suppliers also have offerings for one color and full color decoration to compliment. The more you can do….the greener the better.
It’s that time of year again, everything you see is decorated for the Holidays. Red and Green, bows, lights, stripes and so on. This week we decided to give you some festive designs for shirt decoration. We created three shirts using some of our holiday patterns. Patterns are a perfect way to get some unique full color designs without using any type of printer, just your cutter. All you have to do is use Corel Draw, Illustrator, Cad Worx Live or Roland Cut Studio to create a vector design and send it to your cutter with the white side of the pattern roll up. Weed away the excess, heat apply, and remove the mylar!
Here is a look at some Holiday Patterns that are available :
Spectra Patterns are also available in many other non-holiday styles and colors that can be found on our website. In addition, you can get custom patterns made from your artwork, just give us a call or send an email to learn how. Have a great holiday and enjoy the video!
Who doesn’t want to be able to decorate full color? Everyone does, especially on dark garments. All you need is an optic eye cutter like the Roland GX-24 and an Inkjet or Laser Printer. So in this week’s video, we’re going to show you how.
So essentially all that you need is some opaque transfer paper, and a cutter with an optic eye.The two papers that we used in our examples is our Inkjet for Darks paper and our Jetflex Premium for Dark. Opaque transfer paper is just a paper that has a non-transparent layer that you print on to then heat apply to the shirt. Since it is not transparent, it blocks out the color of the shirt from coming through and show only what you print on to. The only trick here is that anything that is not printed in color is going to remain white, and therefore will need to either be part of the design or it will need cut out. That is why it is so important to have the optic eye cutter.
An optic eye cutter like the Roland GX-24 will allow you to import a bitmap file into the Cut Studio software and basically “vectorize” the graphic so you can cut what you want out, even if all you want to do is just cut the outline. In our examples, we show a couple graphics where we only cut the outline, and the other where we cut individual numbers and letters for a player combo.
Graphic #1 in our video is a classic example for this type of full color process, a family reunion photo. This could be a picture of any kind, shape, size etc. You can simple cut the boundaries of the photo and heat apply or even add a decorative border. Similiar examples for this type of application would be a barbeque, birthday, homecoming, in memory of, or event.
The second graphic is a typical logo. The Seawolves logo that we used show how you can print in full color and contour cut around the logo, then simply heat apply it onto the shirt. This could be a left chest logo, full front or back, tail etc.
The final graphic here shows a standard name and number combo. To jazz it up a little, we decided to powerclip the sea wolves logo into the number. This graphic demonstrates how important it is to have the optic eye cutter to cut detail, every letter and number were cut individually. The difference in this graphic is that we had to use a heat transfer mask to lift the graphic from the transfer paper and keep it all together on the shirt, which is necessary when making multiple cuts.
Using opaque transfer paper with your GX-24 is just one more profit center for your business. This may not suit every application or taste, but it is a viable option for several applications. The beauty is, most of us already have the equipment that we need, a heat press, cutter, and desktop printer. If you have any questions about this week’s shirts please let us know. Stay tuned for next week’s “Pimp A Shirt – Thanksgiving Edition” when we show you how to use a turkey to decorate a shirt !
This week we decided to focus on 2 digital medias that can be used with a vinyl cutter or a Versacamm printer / cutter. These two medias are the Solution Vintage Puff and Solution Metallic. Whether being simply cut and applied or printed in full color, these medias will help to give your garment a very unique custom look. Take a look at some of this week’s pictures for example of the Puff and Metallic media.
Let’s start by talking about the Solution Vintage Puff media. This media has a few very important characteristics that make it very useful. Being part of the Solutions line of products, this media has a universal adhesive so you can use it on a variety of garments. As the name would suggest, this product also comes with a 3D ” Puff ” look. Basically, all you need to do is heat it to the parameters on the instruction sheet… (330 – 5 sec / ’ sec with cover sheet .. MED pressure)… and the media will puff up and become 3 Dimensional. This looks great whether it’s printed on the Versacamm or just cut with a vinyl cutter. As you can see in some of the pictures, we’ve used this media a lot in the past underneath another color to make it 3 dimensional or even on the inside of the shirt to do a reverse embossing type of look. Another trait of this material is that when printed, it provides a vintage and worn look. Very unique for the world of heat transfer.
Reverse Embossing with Puff
Printed Puff
Solution Metallic is also a great dual purpose media. With this media you can get a nice shiny chrome look that will go on virtually any fabric. True, this media is at a premium price, but the decoration results are well worth it. You can use this media to simply cut and for text designs, use it as a background to accent other media, or use the Versacamm to print and cut it. When you use it to print, it gives a nice shiny “metallic-y” look ! Very nice and perfect for several applications.
Printed Metallic
This week we wanted to give you some examples of some medias that can be used with a vinyl cutter or a Versacamm. Hopefully you found it helpful whether you have a cutter or Versacamm. Stay tuned next week for some down and dirty t-shirt pimping….GX-24 style !
This week we decided to do something a little different and show you how to “pimp-a-shirt” digitally, with a Roland Versacamm print and cut machine. So you can really see the differences, we took our pimp-a-shirt logo and produced it the tradtional way with heat applied film, and digitally with the versacamm on the other side of a 100% ringspun cotton t-shirt.
As you know, the logo is about 7 colors in all. With the traditional vinyl cutter and heat applied film method we had to use 7 separate rolls of film. Since we’re the “official” shirt pimping experts…we decided to show off a little and mix it up. We used black, cyan, and orange Eco Film, white, green, and purple Fashion Flock, and some columbia blue MEGAtallic for some extra spice. For anyone unfamiliar with these products, Eco Film is our famous hot or cold peel solid colored material, Fashion Flock is a soft polyester material with a slight dimension, and MEGAtallic is a shiny film with silver glitter throughout it. The result was a pretty awesome, mixed media pimp-a-shirt design that is so unique you couldn’t possibly mimic it with any other decoration method. I have some customers who have done shirts like this and charged $100 or more in some cases for a shirt like this. The key is producing a garment that is totally unique and un-repeatable with any other method.
The second part of this week’s shirt was produced using the Roland Versacamm print and cut machine. With this method, we are starting with a white opaque roll of material specially coated to accept solvent or eco-solvent ink. We chose to use Spectra Quickprint. This digital media is good for cottons / polys / and blends and offers an extremely easy weed, nice feel, and stretchability. Rather than separating the design into 7 individual colors, we simply welded the design so the was only one line to cut…around the outside of the logo. We send this to the Versacamm and voila! The design is printed and cut perfectly with one click of a button. The major difference here is that the digital method took about 20% of the time that it took to produce the cad cut method. So the moral of the story is, you can produce your awesome designs with the Verascamm, save a bunch of time over using cad cut and innovate with the wide variety of digital media available.
Let’s watch the video, shall we?
Stay tuned to next week’s Pimp-A-Shirt where we are going to explain even more about what you can do with the Versacamm and explore some of the other digital medias available.
Our creation this week is as simple as can be as far as design goes, but the garment is one that is very difficult to decorate with heat transfer. The garment we have used is a fully sublimated t-shirt from Journeys. What is a sublimated garment you ask? Well it is a piece of apparel where the decoration is printed into the fabric and then sewn together to complete it. For more info on sublimation, visit http://www.dyesub.org/.
What makes this type of garment so difficult to decorate by heat trasnfer is dye migration. When a garment is sublimated, applying heat to it will activate the dyes in the fabric causing it to bleed through the vinyl. This makes it impossible to use any vinyl that is white or light in color, unless it has blocking agents in the vinyl to block the dye migration. In our case, we used a metallic red vinyl so we would not have to worry about the dye coming through.
The shirt used in this video fit perfectly for the website being promoted. It features an all over print of $100 bills. Six figure professionals probably see quite a few benjamins, so this one was a no brainer to use. The desing being applied is simply the URL, www.sixfigureprofessionals.com with the tagline below it. Check it out.
