Hi guys and gals : this is the the first in a series of posts demystifying the T-shirt creation process.

It is a bit of a unique product so let see what we can do to help put things into perspective.

We print using 3 methods, the most common the first the and least the latter : * Plastisol silkscreen, water based and discharge.*

Plastisol Silkscreen

Coolio – plastisol is an absolute art and the guys who do the silkscreening for springleap.com are THE CHAPS IN THE BIZ. They really know their stuff.

Our plastisol is applied just enough such that is will not leave a heavy footprint so it feels like someone cooked a rubber egg on your chest and left it to set in the summer high noon sun, and not so light that it cracks and peels.

They use state of the art measuring equipment to get the recipe JUST right.

Plastisol works on literally ANY colour of shirt – it provides great coverage and punch colour. When printing on coloured or dark shirt – a white base is always applied before we slap on the colors you see- ouch MORE HIDDEN COSTS FOR US!!!

*but why Jimmy WHY?

If you check out cheap printed shirts from China and America and some other VERY LARGE COMPETITIVE ONLINE T-SHIRT COMPETITONS (not mentioning names – but yoooou know whoooo!!!) they very often do not bother to put a base coat down – so when you have (for example) a blue shirt with a yellow sun on top – the colour of the sun changes because the blue hue of the shirt bleeds through. The worst is stuff like yellow on green – ICK – makes me wanna upchuck. You get this manky green puke yellow. :S

Using this base coat of white on colours and on dark shades means we get a higher reflective index as well – that doesn’t mean that your chest is all shiny like a mirror and reveals vampires everywhere… The human eye sees colour due to light – the less a material absorbs light and the more it reflects the light the more that the colours seem clear basically.

So when we apply a base coat of white – especailly when using fluro colours like in mi corazon you get the beauty of all the amazing punch colours in all their glory without any of the tshirt material bleeding through and dulling or altering their hues and values.

*Water-Based inks.

No. They do not come out in the wash you ‘nana (that’s BA-nana for all non-South Africans ;P).

Water-based inks have come a long way and are perfect for white t-shirts or a single colour black print on any colour of shirt (except black of course :P ) Their advantage is that they leave practically no imprint whatsoever like plastisol – you can’t feel a thing on the shirt! It’s VERY effective for prints like minions , “octoROAR:“http://www.springleap.com/designs/view/octoroar , or psychadelicROAR.

Discharge Ink

Well… it’s not so much an ink as a bleaching effect -it can only be done on certain types of cotton and you have to test. In essence,a discharge process is a bleaching chemical process which discharges the dye of the cotton. Depending on the technique used to dye the cotton you are printing on, the shirt will discharge to a different colour.

Black can discharge to brown, grey, purple or blue generally and blue to light (almost white) blue, and so forth – you really have to test your cotton first and ask your dyehouse what process was used to dye up that fabric.

A BIT ABOUT HOW GRADIENTS ARE CREATED :

Gradients are created by spacing out the dots of the colour until they fade the colour out completely.

While this works really well on a pc/mac – it doesn’t look anywhere as good in silkscreening. You never get the same effect. If it is going from one colour to the shirt colour – this is often cool. Moving a gradient from one printed colour to another is a different story – still – you should see how well out Cha-Chine:http://www.springleap.com/designs/view/cha-ching came out – absolutely incredible!!!

Well guys and gals – that’s it for printing processes for the mo. Got a question about printing? This is the place to do it!

Hi Guys and gals – Please go to “My Crib” and update your profile – upload a photo of yourself, add some information about yourself and what you love!

People want to hear about you ;) don’t hold back!

We would like to crown Mark King, King of Comments.

To show our appreciation for your dedicated participation in springleap, we would like to give you the Sony Ericsson Z770.

You rock Mark, keep the comments coming.

If anyone wants to win with springleap, take a page out of Mark
book “http://upload1.zoopy.com/files/photo/2008/07/03/2738/486c89ed377c5_small.jpg”

Nah, i’m durban boy.. didn’t actually study anything, I’m fresh outta DHS! shoutBack on 3/7/08 by saz1

Yes, on face book isnt every one! see you there. Did you study in JHB? shoutBack on 3/7/08 by Jade

Don’t joke! i stay in Norwood! are you on facebook? shoutBack on 3/7/08 by saz1

Thought I got it. Interesting. yes from CT. I have a marketing company Scratchcard.co.za… we do all sorts of great stuff. I miss Jozie its such a cool place, lived there for a while in Norwood! So you having a smilie day! shoutBack on 3/7/08 by Jade

Lol you actually just hit the nail on the head! that’s exactly what i said LOL, I’m from durbs, but now living in Jozi working as an animator/editor and design for a mobile content company.. Mother city? i know that to be Cape town am i right? shoutBack on 3/7/08 by saz1

and what did you tell your friends? Cause I am the ‘King’? Hee hee anyway, where you from? I am in the beautiful mother city! shoutBack on 3/7/08 by Jade

Thanks Jade, haha yeah my friends were like but why you? shoutBack on 3/7/08 by saz1

Mark Congrats! Thats is sooo cool, bet you are the envy of all your friends. I want to win something!!! :) shoutBack on 3/7/08 by Jade

Thanks guys! shoutBack on 3/7/08 by saz1

shoutBack on 3/7/08 by josiestewart

Hi Guys

It seems that too many people are not understanding one of the vehicles we have provided here :

When you submit your design, we ask you for a story – the story of the design helps the viewer step into the mind of the artists and share the feelings and thoughts that th artist had when creating that design.

When we go to print, we supply a postcard with every tshirt that has a front and back element : the front is a high res image of the design that is on the shirt. The back has a pic of the artists and a profile, including a large section called : From the designer’s fingers. This is like a super duper business card. So writing “ uh… I don’t know” or something with no forethought or intention looks super lame.

Please always give thought to presentation.

Hi springleapers

This is a VERY important announcement :

Please do not use photoshop and illustrator effects like lenses ect.

These do not translate well in screenprinting and we cannot process the results when doing colour separations.

TA!