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offcntrNew Off Center Ceramics t-shirt!
These are not for sale, sadly, just for us to wear to shows. I tried making and selling t-shirts, oh, twenty years ago. I kept having people stop in the booth, admire my work, and then say it was too fragile/heavy/bulky to take home with them. I was still at the Craft Center at the time, and had access to a silkscreen shop, so printed up t-shirts. Patterns were rooster and sleeping cat, in cobalt blue and brown ink, respectively, with colors added via fabric paint. Yellow beak and red wattles and comb on the rooster, yellow tiger stripes or brown siamese points on the cat. White shirts for the roosters, cream for the cats, in three sizes.
I sold exactly one shirt.
So we wore them at shows, gave them away as presents, eventually donated a bunch to Goodwill, just to get them out of my shed. And eventually, wore them out.
But I wanted our t-shirts to wear at shows. (Marketing 101, use your own stuff when you're out selling it.) Even if I'm not selling them, they're drawing attention to my ware, and the patterns I paint on them.
Enter Avery Inkjet Transfers. They're iron-on sheets that you can run through your inkjet printer, trim, and transfer to fabric. They make a bunch of different types and sizes, but I use the light-weight, 8.5x11". I did the original designs--rooster, cat, tree frog, bunnies--in ink on paper, colored with actual oxides and stains, then sprayed with fixative and scanned into the computer. I've since added two more patterns, octopus and hummingbird, originals done in ink and watercolor, and today released a third: my happy baby elephant. I can hardly wait for shows to start again, so we can take her out for a run.
These are not for sale, sadly, just for us to wear to shows. I tried making and selling t-shirts, oh, twenty years ago. I kept having people stop in the booth, admire my work, and then say it was too fragile/heavy/bulky to take home with them. I was still at the Craft Center at the time, and had access to a silkscreen shop, so printed up t-shirts. Patterns were rooster and sleeping cat, in cobalt blue and brown ink, respectively, with colors added via fabric paint. Yellow beak and red wattles and comb on the rooster, yellow tiger stripes or brown siamese points on the cat. White shirts for the roosters, cream for the cats, in three sizes.
I sold exactly one shirt.
So we wore them at shows, gave them away as presents, eventually donated a bunch to Goodwill, just to get them out of my shed. And eventually, wore them out.
But I wanted our t-shirts to wear at shows. (Marketing 101, use your own stuff when you're out selling it.) Even if I'm not selling them, they're drawing attention to my ware, and the patterns I paint on them.
Enter Avery Inkjet Transfers. They're iron-on sheets that you can run through your inkjet printer, trim, and transfer to fabric. They make a bunch of different types and sizes, but I use the light-weight, 8.5x11". I did the original designs--rooster, cat, tree frog, bunnies--in ink on paper, colored with actual oxides and stains, then sprayed with fixative and scanned into the computer. I've since added two more patterns, octopus and hummingbird, originals done in ink and watercolor, and today released a third: my happy baby elephant. I can hardly wait for shows to start again, so we can take her out for a run.