A Little Tidbit About Vinyl Fun
It's a tedious process, which requires a good amount of time at the computer unless you want to stand-but I don't think the feet will be happy. Designing, cutting, weeding- Designing, cutting, weeding-and then the heat. Oh, weeding means to remove, in case you were starting to scratch your head thinking "Hmmm". I myself have the heat press in the garage so I get some good sweat time. But I stay refreshed with a large sweet tea (okay maybe 20 trips to the fridge), and some great music.
Design chosen by my sweet girl to add to her garment.
Design chosen by my sweet girl to add to her garment.
Vinyl printing is when a sheet of polyurethane vinyl is cut to produce a design which is then heat applied to the garments. This is a method that is usually limited to a 1 color print but why not push the envelope, there are NO RULES in art- so several colors may be used. The artwork is created or uploaded to a specific program to produce the artwork in lines apposed to pixels. Pixels cause craziness and your vinyl cutter may explode when trying to determine what kind of crazy came out of your mind with that design.
The artwork is sent in mirror image to the vinyl cutter, which is very much like a large printer using a blade instead of ink. Once the image has been etched into the vinyl, the vinyl can then be removed from the cutter. The excess vinyl surrounding the image can be weeded from the backing sheet, once this has been removed you will be left with your design. Now that seems easy but remember, each cut piece is individually weeded out which means I solely have the pleasure of weeding out all the little pieces that should not be in the design. This is not screen print where a design is made of a screen(s) then used many times to whip out those shirts. Now I'm no screen printer-so don't get offended by my interpretation. I would love to learn that skill-but no garage space. Okay, back to my own skill-each garment made with vinyl gets its very own cut. So it's crazy to do bulk orders unless you have a team of little elf's helping cut, weed and heat. And since I don't live on the North Pole, I'm out of luck. I think the most I did was an order of 30 at one time. Gotta have some good music for this to keep up the pace and patience is a virtue. Mind you, my set up is not very functional. Heat press in garage, computer and vinyl cutter upstairs. Yes-the dreaded stairs.
The artwork is sent in mirror image to the vinyl cutter, which is very much like a large printer using a blade instead of ink. Once the image has been etched into the vinyl, the vinyl can then be removed from the cutter. The excess vinyl surrounding the image can be weeded from the backing sheet, once this has been removed you will be left with your design. Now that seems easy but remember, each cut piece is individually weeded out which means I solely have the pleasure of weeding out all the little pieces that should not be in the design. This is not screen print where a design is made of a screen(s) then used many times to whip out those shirts. Now I'm no screen printer-so don't get offended by my interpretation. I would love to learn that skill-but no garage space. Okay, back to my own skill-each garment made with vinyl gets its very own cut. So it's crazy to do bulk orders unless you have a team of little elf's helping cut, weed and heat. And since I don't live on the North Pole, I'm out of luck. I think the most I did was an order of 30 at one time. Gotta have some good music for this to keep up the pace and patience is a virtue. Mind you, my set up is not very functional. Heat press in garage, computer and vinyl cutter upstairs. Yes-the dreaded stairs.
The design is now ready to be applied to the garment using a heat press. Depending on the garment and the vinyl used degree of heat can range from 160-290 degrees. The garment is placed on the heat press base plate and the image can then be placed on the garment with approximately 10-15 seconds of pressed heat and then released. The backing film from vinyl can now be removed from the garment and you are left with your design. When using multiple colors, each piece is heat pressed separately and the heat time is done in smaller intervals with an increased time at the end.
So that's my take on vinyl fun.
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