Are you interested in finding out how to put a groovy design on a t-shirt? You want to be living it up celebrity style with your own “autographed” Ringo Starr tee shirts? It’s not really a complicated process and you can get or rent most of the equipment needed to make your own t-shirts easily.
Step 1 — Find a design and edit it
The first thing you will want to do when you are trying to figure out what t-shirt to create is find a design. Either use something that you really like, find a picture of your favorite celebrity or movie on the Internet, or create a design of your own. If you’re making t-shirts for a company, then you might want to use the company’s logo on a t-shirt.
To edit the design you’ll need a program like Photoshop. You’ll be able to create files that can be printed on a shirt.
Step 2 — Find a screen printer
Printing on a shirt is definitely not the same as printing on paper. If you want to create designs that even remotely look like the graphic that you edited in step 1, then you’re going to need a special screen printer. Plastisol (water based inks) are applied to the shirt through mesh screens color by color. Process printing (printing with limited colors such as CMYK) is a method best used for light colored shirts, or simulated printing (BRGBG) is a method that is best used for dark t-shirts. Plastisol is the most common ink used because it is easy to print in varying colors without having to worry about readjusting the picture.
Step 3 – Do you want any frills?
There are a number of frills and perks that you can get on a screen printed t-shirt. For instance, you can use shimmer, puff, discharge and chino based inks. You can even get a metallic foil and heat press and stamp it onto any plastisol ink. If you combine it with shimmer ink, metallics give a mirror like effect wherever the ink was applied. These types of techniques are great for a celebrity style t-shirt that you would find in a garment shop or a boutique.
There are also a variety of artists that like to decorate their t-shirts with airbrush, applique, embroidery, impressing, embossing and ironing on flock techniques.
Step 4 — Skip all that, I wanna go frugal…
If you want to forget all this fancy printing and stuff, and just make your own t-shirts that you would love to wear anywhere, then you should try tie-dyeing your t-shirt. This is a great technique that’s been used for a long time to get a nice mix of colors into a plain shirt. Basically, what you do is mix up food dye or water soluble paint in a tub of water and soak a white t-shirt in it. Then you squeeze it out by rolling it up and the streaks of color go through the t-shirt. You can try experimenting with lots of different colors, but when it dries, every single one of them will be different!
