Adventures in T-shirt land:from the workbench

I recently sent out an order to the owner of ISLAND GIRL in Catalina, California. I hope she loves her shirts and they sell well in her store.

I sent her 15 of these, three in each size, and matching arm warmers.

I also thought this would be an awesome Item for her next order:

My thought was that the wings would actually be in burn out, not silver and the shirt would be a light blue. It isn't a totally random suggestion, she has expressed interest both in wings and in the skully heart design.

I am hoping to also get another new wholesale account, it is for a store that specializes in Roller Derby merchandise! I think it would be really fun!

This is my new design of the week, both are brand new screens. The skully heart art is not new, just the screen. This screen is a little smaller than the other one and the colors are inverted.... Right now I have a bunch of screens I want to burn.

I want to do a smaller set of wings for onesies and children's shirts, as well as some text to go on the front. I also want to reburn a few screens that have very fine lines and are hard to print. I think I should invert more designs, especially some of the ones with VERY fine lines, like my revolver screen, and for new art I plan on drawing a dinosaur. lately that has seemed very important.

and something else that is VERY VERY IMPORTANT:

Pictures of my lovely daughter Autumn. She is turning 2 this weekend!

I promised her she could watch a cartoon or two if she let me finish this post, so I guess it is time to turn the computer over to her for a little while... besides, I have 8 dresses that are VERY quickly approaching deadlines.

See you soon!

♥Erica

Adventures in T-shirt land:New Packaging

First off, here are some pictures of autumn in her Halloween costume.

If you ask her what she was for Halloween she says "pumpkin face"

And every morning since halloween she wakes up and the first thing she says is "Halloween?"

So, this would usually be my workshop post, but I don't have many good "in progress"pictures. I am working on some new things, that aren't ready to be photographed, and then there are the same projects I have been working on, but the details are not very interesting, and there are a few graphic design things I am working on... which has been a little daunting. Sometimes I wish GIMP were a little more like photoshop, I am trained in photoshop- but alas, gimp is free.

One thing I am working on that I can show you is my packaging. I am trying to come up with a new way to package my items because I have discovered that what I am doing becomes very time consuming when I am mailing several packages a day.

Right now I am wrapping most of my orders in tissue, tying a ribbon around them

and putting a label on the back. My pillows don't fit in tissue, and I do something extra special for bearing necklaces. I use solid tissue most of the time, but I have not restocked since I am trying to come up with something new.

Since I usually feel like I am fighting time in the morning when I am getting my packages ready to ship, I am trying to come up with a professional looking way to package my items that takes much less time. I am pretty sure I have settled on shipping in brown paper bags with either my logo or any of my other designs screen printed on them, and then sealing with a thank you label.

how do you package your items to ship?

I got an email from the owner of stilo lifestyle today and I will be getting my first consignment check this week! WOOO. I also need to replenish some items, so that is awesome !

I hope everyone is having a lovely week!

xoxo!

♥Erica

Adventures in T-shirt land: Thoughts from the workbench

SO,

One thing I have learned about my two year old, is that it is usually easier to let her make a mess and clean it up later than try to distract her with her own toys, which would also make a mess if she was interested, but she usually isn't interested in her own toys.

This was the case today . I received a package with some fabric in it and she really took to a fabric with anchors on it and ran around the house in her diaper playing with it. I got some striped fabric from www.etsy.com/shop/christiecottage that I think will look awesome with it. I also took down my tub of buttons and let her play with that... which she really enjoyed, and I am not looking forward to cleaning later.

speaking of Autumn, I got to make some cute things for her as well this week.

It started with a package of onesies that was marked 18 months but actually had 24 month onesies in it. So, someone ordered an 18 month onesie, I made a 24 month onesie, and was lucky enough to catch it before shipping the wrong size. Autumn is almost 2 and can wear a 24 month onesie, but I prefer onesies so I cut off the bottom and surged the edge to make a tee shirt. Way cute. I liked it so much that I made another one.

Autumn has food on her forehead, and moments after this photo it was all over her shirt, too... and I am not sure if you noticed, but that was the screen from the picture I put up yesterday, and of course, here is my first shirt with that screen:

Which is available now in my shop.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59508212/wind-up-bird-tee-hand-dyed-and-printed

Now for something exciting! I just ordered a chemical. What it does is remove natural materials when you put it on your fabric and heat set it. I have been having a very difficult time finding burnout fabric like I use for my featherweight scarves, so difficult that I have actually removed many of them from my store because I wont be able to make them if someone orders them. This chemical removes natural materials from fabric and leaves the man made materials, so ideally, with a cotton poly blend fabric I will be able to make my own burnout material. I also realized that I can probably screen print my designs with this stuff... and that means I can burnout my designs instead of only printing them with ink... and that is pretty cool...

See you all later!

♥Erica

Adventures in T-shirt land: Thought from the workbench

Hi,

Do you want to win one of my awesome t-shirts? Please visit my friends blog and enter to win your choice of tee from my shop. You can enter here .

Well. It is Day three of working from home, and I am busier than ever. I am currently working on new orders as well as preparing items for consignment at Stilo Lifestyle in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am trying to get a really good selection of items to take over there, and I need to reorder shirts from Next Level Apparel as well. I was kind of hoping to be able to order another type of shirt, like a long sleeved shirt or a burnout tee, but I will probably just be stocking up on white tees again. I made my priority to work on some damas dresses for my former co-workers daughters quinceanera, which is getting boring because I have to make 7 of the same thing, and I am not really getting paid for them, just for materials so I am having a difficult time pushing through. They ARE really lovely though.

This Tee shirt is going to be in an upcoming movie called "the Lucky One" I am not sure how visible it will be, but I am excited by the possibilities! Warner Brothers sent me a release form saying that they could use the tee on film... so I will probably go see that movie when it comes out.

Last night I dyed quite a few tees, and they all turned out really awesome with beautiful vibrant color and even coverage on the first try, for like four dye batches. I was SO surprised! This is not the first time that something like this has happened. It is amazing how experience teaches you things subconsciously. I have no idea what I am doing differently, I just know that the results are coming out more consistent than they were before, and I LOVE that. The dye batches I ran this morning are coming out better as well! The same thing happened when I started screen printing. I got somewhat inconsistent results, and then all of the sudden everything just became second nature and all my shirts came out better. Have you ever experienced anything like that?

I have quite a few fun new products I am working on in Caustic Threads, I am working on some small card holders, that my or may not make it to etsy. So far I have included them in a couple of packages as surprises. I am also working on some bike pouches, or hip pouches technically, as well as an extra special fancy vendor apron. I just launched a brand new item in caustic threads:

It would make an excellent gift :)

Ok folks, Ill see you tomorrow.

♥Erica