Category — Tutorial

It’s been sometime since I last did a post for the designers out there and that’s why I decided to do a post for the t-shirt designers and printers today.

Screen printing though it may seem to be an easy task, is actually a vast subject and there is lot to learn till you become an expert of the trend and just learning may not be enough, you need some first hand experience to master screen printing. Anyway, the problem is as always getting started with. And especially for the beginners it may be very confusing. Here’s a compilation of some good screen printing related tutorials that will surely help you with various aspects of screen printing.

How to Silkscreen Posters and Shirts

A detailed tutorial covering topics like choosing and preparing your screen,preparing artwork to printing the image etc.

Screen Printing: Cheap, Dirty, and At Home

How to get quality screen print at home for cheap.

Screenprinting using drawing fluid and screen filler

Detailed guide on how ho screen print using drawing fluid and screen filler

How to Prepare Artwork for Screen-Printing

Preparing your artwork for print is a vital step in screen printing, here’s how to do it.

Screen Printing 101 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

A detailed screenprinting introduction and guide. In three parts.

T-shirt Screen Printing Tutorial Part1, Part 2
A guide showing the process of screen printing a single color t-shirt. In two parts.

The Secret to Full Color Screen Printing

Explains how screen printing can be used to print photographic quality full color t-shirts.

Separations for screen printing

How to make color separations for screen printing T-Shirts.

Super-Slick, Screen Printing Separations with Illustrator

Explains in details how to do color separation for screen printing in Adobe Illustrator.

Silk Screening Tutorial

Guides you through one of the methods of silk screening onto silk.

How to Build a Custom Screen for Screenprinting

A to-the-point guide on how to build your own custom screen for screenprinting.

Create a Three-Color Illustration for Screen Printing

This tutorial shows step-by-step how to create separated artwork for a screen printed T-shirt.

6 Great Tips On How To Prepare Artwork for T-Shirt Printing

Some useful and important tips on preparing your artwork for printing.

Designer Tutorials and Tips For T-Shirt Printing Toolkit

Some useful tips and tricks about screen-printing and artwork preparation.

Design artworks for screen-printing

Photoshop and Illustrator tutorial on how to design yore artwork keeping screen-printing in mind.

Separating Colors for Screen Printing

Simple tutorial on separating color for screen printing in Adobe Photoshop.

How to Screen Print a Poster

A guide on how to screen print a poster from start to finish!

How to burn an image into a silk- screen.

A short guide on how to burn the image into the screen.

How to Expose Photo Emulsion for Silk Screen Printing

A Short how-to guide on how to expose photo emulsion for screen printing.

Silk Screen Printing Instructions

A very detailed guide on silk screen printing covering details like preparing work area, tools and screens, making prints etc.

Videos Tutorials

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Using Stencils is a popular way to print t-shirts. So, I thought I would do a round-up of some nice tutorials that shows you how to stencil print your t-shirt or how to prepare your artwork for stencil and the like. So, here it is.

Stencil Art…Printing T-shirts

T-shirt stencil tutorial

Stencil T-Shirt Tutorial

Create a Custom T-Shirt Stencil Design

How to Make T-shirts with Bleach+Stencils

How To Create A Stencil Look In Photoshop

EasyPSD Stencil Tutorial

Stencil Art…Creating Stencils

How To Bleach Stencil T-Shirts

Screenprinting with paper stencils

How To Spray Paint Your T-Shirt With A Stencil

CMYK stencil tutorial

Create a t-shirt stencil design (PDF)

Creating a stencil in Adobe Illustrator

Video Tutorials
Easy DIY T-Shirt Stencil Design

How-to Stencil a T-Shirt

Stencil a t-shirt with a custom freezer paper stencil

How to make a stencil t-shirt

How to Stencil a T-shirt with Inks

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (1-2)

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (3-4)

How To Stencil Screen Print T Shirts (5-6)

Multilayer stencil in Photoshop

DIY- paint a shirt using stenciling

Stencil in Photoshop CS2

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The first step is to register with Storenvy. Once you have registered with your details, Storenvy will take you to its welcome screen (the page with some beautiful clouds). Where you can find links to various features like editing your profile, inviting friends, take part in a discussion and open a store. Follow the link that says open a store.

The next page you need to enter basic details of your store like Store name, your PayPal email address and the Store URL. Enter these details and read and agree to the Seller’s agreement and click on “Open Your Store”.

If everything goes fine you should be taken to the success page that lets you know that your store has been created successfully and also provide links to your store and your store’s admin section. If you try to view your store clicking on the store URL link, you will see that the store is in maintenance mode. This is because by default Storenvy stores has this mode on when created and you need to turn this off manually, after setting up the store with all required details.

Once you are at the admin dashboard, you can track sales, orders, visitors to your store and view and analyze many other important details like Most Viewed Products, Best Sellers etc. While you are at the admin dashboard, click on the Settings dashboard and click on store profile. Fill up other details for your store like store location, store avatar, store description etc.

On the left side of the store profile page you should be able to see two buttons that you can use to turn on or turn off maintenance mode. When you turn off the maintenance mode your store goes live immediately.

The admin dashboard also gives you quick access to all the vital stats and tasks you may need to maintain your store. The Order tab lets your track orders (all, open, shipped, on hold, pending, cancelled orders etc.), the products tab lets you manage your collection of products and add new products, Design tab lets your customize the look of your store by choosing a theme or by editing CSS and HTML and the Promote tab lets you add discount codes.

As you can see, creating your own store with Storenvy is very easy.  Keep experimenting with the options on the admin dashboard and you will soon get a better idea of how things work in Storenvy and also will be amazed to see how easy it is.

Happy Selling!

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Zazzle is very good way to sell your T-shit designs (also other stuffs like skateboard, mouse pad, coffee mugs, binders, stickers etc ..), if you are good at designing but doesn’t want the hassle of printing, maintaining inventory, processing payment, shipping etc. Zazzle provides you with a web store where you can showcase your designs and sell them. Now as with any website, the key factor to your success is traffic to your site. From a webmaster’s prospective it is also important to analyze your traffic, traffic source, conversions etc. The best free way to track traffic and analyze is to use Google Analytics. Setting up Analytics on your personal blog or site is easy. But how do you set up Analytics to track your Zazzle store? Turns out that’s easy too!

First thing to do is to login to your Google Analytics account and create a new profile for Zazzle. You can do this by clicking on the “+ Add new account” link on your Analytics dashboard. Enter all the required details like profile name, website URL (http://zazzle.com) etc. and save the profile. Keep a note of the Analytics tracking ID for this profile and come back to Zazzle.

Login into your Zazzle account and click on “My Account” link on top of the page, on the account page click on the “Store” tab. Find and click on the “Basic Information” link under “Store Settings” on the left sidebar. The basic information page appears where you can edit settings like your store name, store description, store tags, store access (if you want to make your store private) etc.

If you scroll down a bit you can also see a checkbox that says “Enable Google Analytics”. Check that box and enter your Google Analytics Tracking ID (In the form UA-XXXXXXX-X). Save changes and you are done. Google analytics will now track your Zazzle store.

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I am sure you may have come across this viral video on YouTube that shows in details how to fold a T-shirt within seconds. But for the ones that have missed it out. Here’s the video below for you. It’s an interesting technique that you can apply to really fold your T-shirt in seconds and the good thing is that it’s not that hard to learn the trick. So, here’s how to fold at shirt in seconds …

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The growth of the T-shirt industry is tremendous. Apart from T-shirt being one of the most popular outfits to be worn today, T-shirts growth has been fueled by other factors such as the spawning of numerous online T-shirt stores, the custom design t-shirt stores where you can customize the detail of any tee to your choice have made shopping for t-shirts a convenient task. Moreover T-shirts are today being used as publicity means by big corporations to small blogs alike. All these factors have only resulted in manifold growth of the t-shirt industry in the recent years.

So, how do you get a tiny winy slice of this? Well, there are various ways to earn a living with t-shirt industry and in this post I will discuss about how you can earn a living by designing T-shirts.

First, decide if it’s for you!

It is important to find out if t-shirts designing is really the job for you before you start looking for work. Although technically designing a t shirt may seem just the same as designing any other stuff (and you may even use the same tools) practically, designing a t shirt is very much different from designing a say, website template. You may be very good at designing a web template but trust me, that doesn’t mean you are very good at designing t shirts too. The easiest way to find this out is to browse through the websites that accept public design submissions and look for trendsthere as to what kind of designs are liked by people and which ones get booed. Even better, just try out a couple of your ideas by submitting them and look at the response.

Okay, I know I can design a t-shirt, now what?

Now that you are sure that you are capable of designing professional grade tees, it’s time to get some design jobs. As with any kind of freelance job, your freelance t–shirt designing career would depend highly on how you constantly find new customers and how you convert some of them to your long term loyal customers. But where do you look for such freelance design opportunities?

The first stop will be freelancing job sites like iFreelance, GAF etc. Unlike freelance writing jobs, you won’t find a great many of t-shirt designing jobs on these sites but sometimes you may find a good client.

You can also try out crowdsourcing sites like 99designs that have considerable amount of t-shirt design opportunities.

Some t-shirt sites like threadless is an excellent place to get recognized for your work and earn money at the same time. Here’s how threadless work; you submit your design (as per their submission guidelines) and after that, the threadless community will score and comment on your submission. If you can manage to get enough scores and your t-shirt design is selected as the next threadless t-shirt then you win $2,000 in cash and $500 in threadless gift certificates. What’s more you stand to win up to $22,500 if you win a “Bestee” in the Threadless Awards. (There are designers who have earned to the tune of $56000 from threadless).

Now, you know that sites like threadless isn’t a guaranteed source of income. That is, you get paid only if your design is selected by the community. But these type of sites are a great way to get some exposure, meet other designers, build a network (very essential factor in a freelancer’s career), and most importantly to get feedback on your designs and improve them. You can also try out any of the online services that let you open an online store with your own design and sell them, like CafePress, Zazzle etc.

A big list of places where you can find freelance t-shirt design jobs is the topic of a future blog post hence this gives just a vague idea of places where you can find such work.

If you are just starting out as a tee designer, I suggest that you spend some time in discovering and trying out new markets to know which ones suits you. Also, it helps if you can develop your own unique style that people recognizes. Take advantage of various forums and platforms where you can meet other designers and clients and gradually try to build a good network. Over some time, you will have some of your work being printed as t-shirts and once you have some items to show off to your clients, build a portfolio. A good portfolio goes a long way in getting you more freelance jobs.

So, if you think there’s a t-shirt designer in you, then go ahead and give it a try today. You may be earning your next six figure income from it very soon.

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