hooperjaws
05-06-2011, 07:11 PM
Hi all!
Well yesterday I decided to ignore the general wishes of the wifey and start yet another "tinkering about" project: Sublimation mug printing!! Woo hoo!!
Ive always fancied making t-shirts or doing something similar. Theres something quite cool about making stuff, and if you can make a few pennies along the way then thats a brucie bonus too. Looked into screen printing many many years ago but it seemed too expensive and messy.
Last year the wife dragged me to an event at skegness butlins, where I witnessed a stand charging over the odds for T-shirts and Hoodies, taking transfers from a folder of pre-prepared logos and applying them in a few seconds with what looked like a mini ironing presses (cut down versions of the one Bea used to use on 'Prisoner Cell Block H"). Money for old rope it looked like to me.
Anyway the summer is coming and now the wife is bullying me to remove most of my junk from various projects and hobbies (bike restoration, arcade machines, fishing gear) from our house and rent someones garage so we can de-clutter our house. Not quite in the spirit of de-cluttering I see having a garage as an opportuinty to do more stuff, and hence my mind turned back to t-shirts.
However, as one lot of reading leads to another, I have learned a little about sublimation printing, and having seen some of the cool mugs people have made, I think I'm going to have a go at mug-making instead.
Ive ordered some half-empty ink bottles from ebay (keep the startup costs as low as possible), some refillable empty cartridges for my old Epson printer that i havent used since I bought a Canon, some heat-resistant tape, and some transfer paper. Im hoping to learn to use Adobe Illustrator (since we already have it) for designs. Do I buy a mug-press or try making them in our oven...?! (I wonder how toxic these subli dyes are...) Do I need wraps or will paper taped to the mugs work fine as they are..??
Left to buy: some Mugs. Maybe Wraps. Maybe Press. Maybe small convection oven.
Likely to happen because I'm trying to do everything on the cheap: Ink everywhere other than it should be, lots of mistakes and scrapped mugs, burnt fingers.
Advice welcome!!
Cliffy.
Well yesterday I decided to ignore the general wishes of the wifey and start yet another "tinkering about" project: Sublimation mug printing!! Woo hoo!!
Ive always fancied making t-shirts or doing something similar. Theres something quite cool about making stuff, and if you can make a few pennies along the way then thats a brucie bonus too. Looked into screen printing many many years ago but it seemed too expensive and messy.
Last year the wife dragged me to an event at skegness butlins, where I witnessed a stand charging over the odds for T-shirts and Hoodies, taking transfers from a folder of pre-prepared logos and applying them in a few seconds with what looked like a mini ironing presses (cut down versions of the one Bea used to use on 'Prisoner Cell Block H"). Money for old rope it looked like to me.
Anyway the summer is coming and now the wife is bullying me to remove most of my junk from various projects and hobbies (bike restoration, arcade machines, fishing gear) from our house and rent someones garage so we can de-clutter our house. Not quite in the spirit of de-cluttering I see having a garage as an opportuinty to do more stuff, and hence my mind turned back to t-shirts.
However, as one lot of reading leads to another, I have learned a little about sublimation printing, and having seen some of the cool mugs people have made, I think I'm going to have a go at mug-making instead.
Ive ordered some half-empty ink bottles from ebay (keep the startup costs as low as possible), some refillable empty cartridges for my old Epson printer that i havent used since I bought a Canon, some heat-resistant tape, and some transfer paper. Im hoping to learn to use Adobe Illustrator (since we already have it) for designs. Do I buy a mug-press or try making them in our oven...?! (I wonder how toxic these subli dyes are...) Do I need wraps or will paper taped to the mugs work fine as they are..??
Left to buy: some Mugs. Maybe Wraps. Maybe Press. Maybe small convection oven.
Likely to happen because I'm trying to do everything on the cheap: Ink everywhere other than it should be, lots of mistakes and scrapped mugs, burnt fingers.
Advice welcome!!
Cliffy.