1971 Baseball Champs!

I was approached by Soumalay Douangmala of Antworx to get some last minute, low run, shirts off press this week and The Pull was happy to help. The shirts were designed for a client of his that wanted a special way to celebrate her dads birthday. Apparently he played high school baseball back in his day, and along with his team, they won states in 1971. So we printed up 8 shirts, with a front and back print, for each of their family members to wear to his birthday party. The front of the shirts featured a Baseball State Champions design and the back featured his name and number.

This design used a lot of halftone dots and small lines to achieve that vintage distressed look. I was a bit worried about it, since I don't use discharge printing methods and opaque white ink is really thick. Typically it requires a really open mesh to get good coverage on dark shirts but to hold the detail I'd need a tighter mesh. I ended up using a 150 mesh count screen and mixed my white ink about 50/50 with a semi transparent white and opaque white. It gave me smooth enough ink to get clean pulls and hold the finer details. I also added some extra water to the ink to keep it from clogging in the small details of the design.

I love doing custom prints for people that have good design and meaning behind them. I think these shirts fall into the "Re-Union Shirts that Don't Suck" category. The 8 shirts ran a total of $18.50 each and were printed using non-toxic water based white ink. Soumalay supplied the shirts, which were 50/50 blend poly cotton Jersey brand t-shirts.


And from what I heard from Soumalay, his client loved them! I'd love to see a group shot guys!

Harkin Family Retreat

Continuing our efforts at The Pull to make reunion shirts that don't suck, we present The Harkin Family Retreat shirts, hot off the press. Jessica and Matt Watson will be spending a weekend with Jessica's family, The Harkins, wearing these shirts that they designed. For those of you not familiar with The Made in Oregon/WhiteStag sign it's a rift off of this iconic Portland sign.


We also made some for the kids, I was able, with some rigging, to get this cute 12month t-shirt printed fairly successfully with the original full size chest print. Normally I'd setup another platen and burn another screen, but they only wanted one of these and I think the end result gave it a nice vintage feel.

Jessica has a total of 16 shirts made up in mixed sizes and styles. All the adult t-shirts were American Apparel 50/50 ( poly/cotton) Heather Blue in either the Standard America Unisex style or the Women's Short Sleeve, while the kids are American Apparel Standard 100% Cotton. Printing was all hand pulled using non-toxic water based inks. In the end the cost of each shirt was just under $18 per, and that includes a rush shipping charge to get the t-shirts here in time to print on.

Harkins I hope you love 'em and I wanna see a group shot from this weekends retreat!

I know family reunion season is almost over but if anyone wants/needs an unsucky reunion shirt let us know, we can print your design or help you create the perfect image to show your family luv!

Roscoe's Hopped Barley Tea

I was approached by Cristina Dunseth to help make her 1 year wedding anniversary gift something special. Her husband brews his own beer, and she was getting some letter pressed 24oz beer labels made but also wanted to get some posters and T-Shirts done up. The artwork was printed without knockouts, so we achieved a three color effect by printing on top of the white in some spots and directly on the paper or t-shirt in other spots. I also found out that the poster was submitted to the HOW Poster Design Contest! So you might here more about this print in the future.

Update! While mostly focused on the lables, the poster is shown over at Lovely Packages!

Update two! The poster, labels and shirt were featured on FPO recently! The identity also won a 2010 Portland Ad Federation Rosey award! Congrats to the hard work and excellent design skills of HUB Creative!

Wedding Ties

So there's going to be a lot of work being posted from my good friend Matt Watson's wedding, but I thought I would start with these. These ties are the result of a collaboration between Laura, aka @Curiousdoodles, and Matt, with me setting up and pulling the prints. Each tie was intended as a gift for the groomsmen, the ushers and the fathers. The green tie, was the tie Matt wore as he was married.

We managed to print the ties with a 156mesh screen, with water based inks and with some tape registration, we were able to tile the pattern across the length of the tie. There was definitely some difficulties to overcome, and the ink didn't always lay evenly but overall we were pretty happy with the end results.

I'm really enjoying helping people print on items beyond t-shirts and loving doing work that holds so much meaning for the people receiving it. As always, let me know if you need any custom screen printing done.

Petri Baby Announcements!

Paul and Basia Petri came to me with a unique announcement idea to let their family know that they are expecting. The end result are the onesies above that Basia designed and I screen printed for them.

I was happy to help them spread their good news and in an effor to extend my own congradulations to the couple, I made them this wall plaque version of their design to hang. Congratulations you two!

Arriba Ziba!

Arriba Ziba Hood to Coast team shirts fresh off the press! Featuring an original design by Heather Cummings these shirts were printed using water based ink on Slate colored American Apparel Sheer Jersey T-Shirts.

These shirts were a bit of a pain to print with the little heat wave we have passing through portland. My studio lacks AC, and with the high heat and low humidity my inks were drying faster then I could pull them. I ended up washing out the screen 3 times to finish this job up. So I think it's time I cough up the cash and get some climate control, it seems I'll need an AC for the temp and a humidifier to keep the air from being to dry...

If anyone is interested in custom silkscreening, give me a shout and we'll work something out!

Fresh off the press - Custom order

Thought I'd share these bachelor party t shirts I printed up late last week. A shirt was made for each member of the party, with the Bachelor getting the red one. The design was supplied to me and the shirts were printed by hand with water based inks on American Apparel sheer jersey shirts. If you're interested in custom prints, either printing your design or having custom artwork made, let me know.