Hello,
I recently started a new career in the visitor attraction business. We sell a lot of tshirts through the course of the year and most of the ones we get are screen printed line drawings of things like vehicles and such. We get these from a couple of different companies and the quality is ok for what they are. They cost us about £4.80 to £5.20.
Now my wife has been building on her craft business (making stencils and scrapbooking materials and now she has another shop on etsy with the things she makes herself with these, as well as starting mugs etc and she has begun now doing other sublimation work involving a heat press.
So, I saw the oppertunity for me to get the quality of tshirts better at my work, knowing that she is a bit of a perfectionist and also supporting her build her business more. We went to the newtech show in southampton a few weeks back and TMT were their with their demo of the oki 711wt and wow 7.8 and t-one papers. They printed a couple of sheets for us to take away. I have now pu these on a couple of cotton t shirts. The WOW 7.8 we put on a dark blue tshirt but after just a couple of washies it looks quite cracked and not great. The image started off looking amazing. But would cost a fair bit to setup and I just feel people would be disappointed a week or two after buying the tshirt in my shop.
However, I have looked at tshirts in my cupboard that I have purchased or been given and some of them are the same.
We have invested in a colour laser printer which should come soon, and I am going to order the ghost white toner for that model. We needed a new laser printer anyway so the only additional cost for this is the £110 for the toner. Which should hopefully be better for some of my wives style of packaging any way. We have some samples of different type of paper coming too.
Does anyone want to share any winning combinations of tshirt and paper they use. I would like to do darks but I can start off just on lights if that really is better. Or should we just stick to sublimation tshirts which seem to wash pretty well.
Sorry for the essay, just wondered what peoples thoughts or experiences were.
Alex.