Oh yes! Iron-ons!
The online place called customink.com said they would be able to do the art as silkscreen. (Unlike any local silkscreen places who didn't want the job.) But they quoted the piece as a 9 or 10 color project. Not only would we have been required to purchase the shirts they provide, but that cost-per-color would have put us (if I remember correctly) up close to $400.00 for approx 20 shirts. (free shipping lol) The sales rep was friendly and had full confidence they would be able to produce a final product we would be happy with. He even said they were capable of doing half-tones, gradients, etc. Pretty much anything we needed. But the price was too high for a silly little joke turned reality. So I tried to force the project into fewer colors. I was never very pleased with how that looked.
So then I investigated the iron-on option. One can purchase ink-jet printable iron-on transfer paper at Wal-Mart for a reasonable price. (Hmmm, rough memory here, but I think it was approx. $3-7 for 5-ish sheets?) So I made a t-shirt design for Ben's Dad to test out how well the do-it-yourself iron-on designs worked out. To my surprise, the print and final quality was better than expected! (Not perfect, but actually very decent.)
So we put it to a vote with the family. The options were to spend a crap ton of money for higher quality shirts, or allow Jenny to do it the cheaper, less quality way. I was happy the vote came back the way it did even though it meant lots of work for me. haha! I originally wanted the text to be "floating." I knew that would be impossible to hand-cut & place each letter for 20 shirts. So I designed the new final to have a black background to unite the main logo into one piece, yet keep that floating text feel. (That's why all the shirts are black and not varied colors which would have been fun.) It might be hard to see, but in the first posted image of the logo, you can see the background is slightly less black than the borders around the logo and crest. That represents where I hand cut-out each iron-on decal per shirt. (Each shirt had 3 decal pieces: The main logo, the crest, then the little oblong oval containing "Est.2010") I did my best to cut each one as if I were only doing one shirt, giving each the careful attention it deserved. That was ... hard. But I knew I would hate the final look of the iron-on decal as a sheet rather than silkscreen quality. So I tried my best to make the cuts look styled. I STILL hate how that aspect of the shirts looks. hahaha! But at least I know I did what I could to make it look ... better. Maybe I should have released my hold on the idea of floating text. But I didn't. So there it is. LMAO!
Silkscreen cost would have been approx. $400
Shirts and iron-on version wound up approx. $130
And yes, they do seem to take being washed okay so far. We also have the ability to make new shirts if the need arises. (As long as that paper is still being sold.)
I'll mess around with files today (or soon) and upload the shirt design I made for Ben's dad.
Subject: Flaming Pizza Day 
Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:32 pm
