Here’s a wide view of my boof:

That’s orange warning mesh typically used on construction sites that wraps around the top there. I’m not super satisfied with the look overall, but I had to start someplace.

Here’s a table close up - merch on your left, live printing on your right.

I had over 11 stencils for live printing… SWEET. And check out those two thugs in the front there - the guy in the glasses and the kid in the light blue shirt. Thats Al and Matt Scillitani. ROUGH CUSTOMERS. Consider yourself warned.

Here’s Al and Matt again, being menacing as always. Notice Matt repping the uncle tshirt from the echoboy series!!!

Vaden Lugosi did some printing on his own… and attracted a camera crew. He was a great stenciler… I hope his shirt is holding up well.

This young man designed his own shirt - he’s also planning to do some stencil printing of his own!

I got a booth next to Eva of Rivet Raleigh, NC Jewelry!

A custom application for Kelly Clocks’em:

Here’s Chad “the Destroyer” Boyd and Lady Smackbeth waiting for Chad’s shirt to dry… the most exciting part of the live printing process.

Brandy on the right - an awesome booth partner. The day after the show my buddy Al told me “you guys worked great together in the booth.”

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, said hi and bought a shirt or live print! And big thanks to Eva and Ed for bringing me the clothes rack AND dummies. And finally, HUGE thanks to Ty Beddingford, to whom I still owe $50 for my booth!!!

See ALL the SparkCon BazaarSpark Garrett Shirts pictures >>

In case you just can’t get enough of Garrett Shirts, here’s Live Printing the Super Berry Bun Buns: First Friday at Design Box!

Here I am proudly wearing it before Brandy and I went out to pint night (it’s a logo from Jesus Christ Super Star):

Mark Bee and I are both big fans of the incredible rock opera Jesus Christ Super Star. Here’s my favorite jam:

Thank you Mark Brown.

Plus I’ll be LIVE PRINTING my new inkybear180 series, along with a North Carolina design. And Ty thinks the SparkCon crew will be bringing me a SparkCon burning head guy stencil.

Bring me a light-colored blank article of clothing and I’ll put some designs on it in black ink only.

Who: Garrett Shirts + 30 other vendors
Where: Moore Square in downtown Raleigh
When: 10-5

I hope to see you there for some live, monochromatic yet still dramatic printing

G

Further, since most people use computers to "stencilize" their artwork I didn’t see any discussion about how to design strong, durable stencils that will withstand multiple printings.

Documentary filmmaker Neal Hutcheson and I traded services to make this 6 part video on stencil screen printing, a tedious but very low-cost way of mass producing t shirts. This is how I make all my shirts, from the Super Berry Bun Buns to the Echoboy t shirt series.

So grab a tasty beverage, pull up a chair and come with me on a journey to the wonderful world of stencil screen printing (and watch for special appearance by my kitty cat Jack Jack).

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (1-2)
1) Image to Stencil
2) Prepping to Cut Stencil

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (3-4)
3) Cutting Stencils
4) Prepping the Shirts

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (5-6)
5) Printing with Screen and Stencil
6) Clean Up/Setting the Ink

Wootini website
Wootini MySpace

He has a past in miniatures/toys that you can play games with. I really want to bring shirts in this direction. Somehow (haven’t gotten this part down yet). Like some kind of wearable "paper rock scissors" game where you’re wearing adorable robotic bunny warriors. And there are random numbers printed in your armpits and if your pit scores are higher then you beat the contenders? Yeesh - the mechanics are a damn mess, but I can’t shake the concept.

Anyways, Mike suggested 2 awesome ideas for interactive shirts…
One is printing GPS coordinates on a shirt and then hiding a companion shirt at that location. So when you buy the shirt you’re actually buying a ticket to a treasure hunt. Pretty f-ing sweet idea. Plus you could hide toys/merchandise out there instead of a companion shirt.

The other concept was a development of the first idea. Basically you take 2 of the same sized shirts, same designs. The shirts are different colors. You cut out and switch the design element on both shirts. For example on this toad bone design:

…you’d cut out the heart and sew it onto the other.

I stocked up on some back issues of Juxtapose while Brandy fliered the shop for the upcoming CRG vs. Tucson bout… Thanks Mike! Also we randomly met Ian while fliering on the streets of Chapel Hill… so now we’re definitely going to the Hi Mom film fest !

So I created 3 new stencils, all smaller than the one I made for the original inkybear stencil: Cloud, Spike and Lightning.

Here’s a hero shot of the Lightning group (the best of the bunch):


inkybear Cloud

inkybear Spike

inkybear Lightning

inkybear Stencils Used

inkybear Art Director
This is ms. bella, making sure I take regular pet breaks and don’t overwork myself. Thank you ms. pretty cat!

My Conclusions
As a whole, I’m not happy with the inquiry. At least, I’m not excited with the results. I think there’s some interesting stuff starting to happen with the lighting inkybear but the others aren’t doing much for me. In all I remain the most excited about the live printing I did at the Design Box. There I didn’t flip any stencils at all, but rather used spray mount. I still think there’s something starting to happen in the first inkybear stencil flip experiment, but these shaped stencils aren’t a step I’ll be going with very far.

Here they are, for my future reference:
First and most important is the making of video…

Oh yeah, and here’s their final product:

For me it doesn’t work. I mean, why tshirts? What do shirts have to do with sandwiches? Did they do shirts just because it hasn’t been done before? That’s not a good enough reason!! (jk - I’m just jealous. but shirts don’t actually make sense)

update: according to the originators, Colle + McAvoy, they were targeting college kids. That’s why the tshirts. Plus they wanted it to spread on YouTube so it had to be a fresh, sparkly concept.

And here’s a video that I played over and over because it’s so catchy:

In that interest I bought 3 yards of fabric and printed some buns onto it. A couple nights ago I sewed up and stuffed my first buny pupu:

One lady at the DesignBox show said she wanted a whole shirt full of bun bun butts.

Please ignore my sewing butchery here… I’m learning.

Thanks to my mom for the stuffing material. The lady at the fabric store tried to sell me batting for some reason??

While printing that night I thought of flipping the stencil and using 2 different colors. Every time you flip the stencil you’ll get the ink pressed on from the side you just printed. Make sense? So here’s an inky bear (my newest little critter) printed using this method:

Obviously the print right before that I did a red inky bear.

So… the night I printed the inkybears I got so excited I ended up printing a whole shirt. Here’s one row:

Here’s the front of the shirt:

Here’s the back:

I’m not sure I’ll wear it that much - it’s a little busy, even for me. But still, it was a blast making it and I can’t remember having more fun printing! I’m normally so concerned about smudges and spills and what not but this method lets me lean the other way into happy smudgery.

For the DIYers out there, here’s the stencil and the little trim roller that I used for printing. That little roller works sweet, and it comes in its own little plastic tray at HomeDepot. They’re way too expensive for what they are but they work perfect.

Here’s a closer view of the roller I used:

I haven’t made shirts for “fun” in a long time… I mean, it’s my hobby and everything and I love the process I’ve developed over the years but this process allowed for spur of the moment decisions and an engagement with the medium that I haven’t felt for a long time. Yay for stencil flipping!

Let me know if you’d like more detailed process info - I may write up an instructable. G. Also - sorry for the weird blueness of the photos. Not sure why that happened, by photogurphy isn’t my thing ;P