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!

SurfSkank at The Pull!

This weekend I was happy to have Rebekah Signh of SurfSkank come and make some t-shirts at The Pull! We had a bit of trouble with our water based inks as the late afternoon sun and heat set in on saturday, but we persevered and got this great batch of 4 color women's shirts done this morning. Thanks to Nick Wood over at @Ryonet for giving me some great suggestions for battling the heat. Speaking of Ryonet, I also got to use my new 16" x 22" plattens along with a new platen glue, that did an amazing job of keeping the shirts still despite flashing between each of the 4 colors and even after curing the shirts on platen. This stuff makes the spray mist stuff seem like a complete waste of time.

Let me know what you think of the prints below, the design was made for SurfSkank by Margarita Yerastova to see more of her designs check out: www.yerastova.com

And as always, if you've got an project or idea you'd like to see printed, or would like to actually pull your own prints on, let me know!

HiP at The Pull

Just before the holiday madness Bettie, of HandMade In Portland aka HiP, paid a visit to The Pull to get some totes made. She's posted this great review over at her blog about her time with us and what you could expect if you want to get some screen printing done. HiP is a great resource for learning about Handmade vendors and events here in Portland!

*photo credit Bettie Newell

Holiday Card Time lapse!

While printing this years batch of holiday cards I thought it would be fun to show you some of the process that goes into silk screening by making a fun time lapse of the penguin cards being made! I take you from exposing and hosing to getting the job off press in under 2mins! Don't forget, the cards are now available in my shop!

The Pull - Ladies in Hats

This past weekend The Pull was lucky to have Angela Sun come and use our studio to help create her Lady In Hat prints on muslin and a striped cotton fabric. When you use our D.I.Y Custom Screen Printing options to pull your own prints, you'll find your screen exposed and on press waiting for you to print when you arrive.
We mix the inks, and give you a demo on how to proceed. Then we are there with you through the printing process to make sure you get the best prints possible.

Here I am running the flash curer to properly set the inks while Angela continues to run prints on the press. The end result, these lovely 6" x 6" Ladies in Hats wall art pieces.

Angela will be offering these in her Etsy shop soon. I'll update this post with a link as soon as I have one. If there's something you'd like to print, please check out the D.I.Y Custom Screen Printing section of my website and Together, Let's Make Something!

Update!!! - As members of my email list should be aware, Angela has opened her Etsy shop and is not offering these lovely items for sale!

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!

Watson Invitation Suite

This lovely Wedding Suite was printed here at The Pull by Laura Trimmell, of CuriousDoodles, and myself for the Watson wedding.

Laura designed them and I helped print them. We used a combination of printing techniques, including inkjet for the small detailed txt on the back of the RSVP's, to Silk screening for the front of the RSVP's and the actual invites and even stamping for the envelopes. They are featured on the Oh So Beautiful Paper blog right now if you want to see more, and of course you can see more of them at Laura's Blog.

And as always if you have something fun you'd like to print, be sure to check out my DIY ScreenPrinting section.