Skip to main content

Decorating

Think Like a Business Owner, Not a Technician

It’s easy to get bogged down with the technical aspects of apparel decoration, but the real path to success lies in thinking like a business owner first. In this Shop Talk from the Impressions Expo in Fort Worth , Jennifer Cox of the National Network of Embroidery Professionals, explains that the key to success lies…

Dave Gardner Selected for Lifetime Achievement Award

At the recent Impressions Expo in Long Beach, Dave Gardner was awarded the third ever Lifetime Achievement Award by Ink Kitchen and Impressions. You can read about it here in Impressions Magazine. Dave pioneered simulated process printing and has created t-shirt color separations and artwork that are the gold standard to which all other printers…

What’s So Great About Transfers?

What’s so great about transfers? So many things! Their flexibility, scalability, reliability and viability as a decorating solution for literally any type of customizable product. This Shop Talk from Impressions Atlantic City features a dream team of transfer experts- Kyle Eslinger of SanMar, Josh Ellsworth of  Stahl’s, Carrie Terwilliger of  FM Expressions, Jody Mazade of Howard…

Garment Construction from Start to Finish

Screen printing is an art but it’s also science and chemistry. The more you understand about the fabrics you’re decorating and how they interact with different types of ink, the better your end results will be. There is so much terminology- ringspun, open end, carded, combed, singles, PDFs, garment dye, pigment dye and more! We…

The Future of Transfer Technologies

Heat applied transfer technology has made great strides in the past few years. Now there’s almost nothing that can’t be decorated with a transfer. We gathered a panel of experts- Josh Ellsworth from Stahls  ; Jody Mazade from Howard Custom Transfers ; Nathan Anderson from FM Expressions ; and Mark Bailey from SanMar– to share their insights about how transfers…

Matching Garment to Decoration Technique: Screen? Embroidery? Transfer?

Back in the day there were cotton and 50/50 t-shirts and everything was either screen printed or embroidered. Those days are long gone. Now you need to educate yourself and your customers in order to give them what they want. You need to understand your substrates, your inks and the wide variety of decoration techniques…

How Do I Decorate a Shoe? Transfers as a Solution for Difficult Applications

You probably have a heat press in your shop that you use for decorating on performance fabrics that can’t handle a pass through the dryer, but did you know you can also use your heat press to decorate shoes, boots, slippers and other items? In this Shop Talk from Impressions Fort Worth, Josh Ellsworth of Stahls…

Learn Why Transfers Are for Shops of Every Size

Transfers offer solutions for shops of all sizes- from home-based small businesses to multi auto print shops. Josh Ellsworth of Stahls Transfer Express, Stan Banks of T-Shirt Side Hustle and Jason Murphy of Sanmar talk in detail about how transfers and a heat press are valuable tools for shops of any and every size in…

Ways to Decorate Face Coverings

In our on-going series on masks, i.e. face coverings, we cover decoration. The varieties of ways to decorate masks and other face coverings, some of which then have different methods associated with them. transfers of a variety of types sublimation (also a form of transfer) embroidery pad print direct screenprint (with a variety of inks)…

How to Print Bandanas

  No doubt that printing loads of bandanas will be part of our “new normal”.  Here are some tips for success… 1) Iron or Steam Buy a commercial iron and/or steamer and treat every piece prior to printing to flatten wrinkles in the fabric.  It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not as…

No more pages to load