Learn How To Screen Print Tee Shirts At Home

My friend Jim Larson from Shur Loc Fabric Systems was kind enough to make this video for the Catspit Productions YouTube channel. In the video Jim does a demonstration of his newest fabric and frame stretching system called Easy Frame. This is a similar device to the Shur Loc roller frame stretcher but it uses a new frame designed especially for Shur Loc.

The video is called, “Screen Printing: Stretching Screens With Easy Frame”. This is one of the last show videos for 2010. I may have 1 or 2 more that I pull out from some left over footage but this is the last demo by a vendor. I have one more vendor demo of a direct to screen system and I may yet post that one. But this is the last planned posting for show videos. Stop by the YouTube channel and watch this video today! Don’t forget to rate thumbs up!

As always, thanks much for stopping by and reading the Catspit Blog. Make sure to visit the Catspit website for all your educational information about screen printing tee shirts.

New video uploaded to YouTube! This video is about the website and what you can expect to find there. I answer some questions that I have been asked recently more than once for all to enjoy and benefit from. Please take a moment to watch this video and learn more about Catspit Productions online.

The video is called, “How To Screen Print Tee Shirts: Website Q & A”. In this video I am using a new camera to film. Earlier this week when I was trying to make this video and another, my regular camera overheated and produced very poor video quality. That combined with battery problems and lens debris, made me move on to another, newer camera I have had for some time but never used for videos.

Therefore, I am still adjusting to the way the new camera reads light, shadows and color. It will take a few videos to iron out the bugs in my video recording process. Please be patient, I promise not to let you down and I hope to increase the production quality of my videos in the very near future.

Thanks again for reading!

Some of you may have noticed that we went from having 4 videos with YouTube revenue sharing to becoming an outright YouTube Partner. Yes, this is true. I have partnered the Catspit YouTube channel and it is now generating a small amount of revenue through the Google ads. But money is not the reason why I approved this partnership.

The main reason for joining YouTube in a partnership is exposure. As a partner my videos enjoy a higher search ranking than others with similar content or titles. YouTube may also feature a few of my videos sometime and as it is known, YouTube tends to favor partners in general. So, the whole partnership is about growing the channel. The final reason for the partnership is the very cool branding options they give partners. Now the Catspit YouTube channel looks great and has direct links to the Catspit website. And I’ll be honest too, the small amount of money the Google ads generate will pay for the online services I use to run the website and blog. That’s great news because before, this whole project was a charity case and cost me money out of my pocket. Now my bookkeeper and accountant are happy to see the internet project break even and possibly generate a positive income.

Granted the YouTube profits will be very small; I’m no Ray William Johnson! And the topic of screen printing is not popular enough for me to become a “full time YouTuber”. Besides, I make my money printing tee shirts and I don’t think YouTube’s partnership will ever compare to that income. So have no fear, I will continue making great screen printing videos for everyone to learn from for free.

Thank you so much for all of your continued support and if you haven’t subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, please do so today!

New Video! Heat Transfer Shirts With Names & Numbers Using Stahls Thermo-FILM®, Player Perfect. This video shows how you can use a good quality heat transfer to do names & numbers without having to screen print everything. These heat transfers can save you a lot of labor which balances out the cost; a lower profit margin but with much less labor. So it evens out to me. Check it out!

The video is called, “Heat Transfer Tee Shirts With Names & Numbers”. This is a great video for all you home businesses specializing in heat transferred products. If you purchase anything through Stahls, make sure to let them know that Jonathan from Catspit Productions sent you!

I hope you all had a great 4th of July! Thanks for all of your support!

“Some Pointers On Screen Printing” article by Jonathan Monaco of Catspit Productions, LLC, http://catspitproductionsllc.com, for Michelle Licudine at: http://www.flightsofancy.biz.

One of the first things I advise people to do when working with screen printing and direct liquid emulsions is to use 100% opaque film. This is something that we have become accustom to not having. In the early days of screen printing the film positives were made using a genuine photographic process producing a silver nitrate piece of film that was just absolutely opaque. The density of the image area in the film was 100%. The film was made with “process” cameras or “stat” cameras and processed through small automatic developing machines. As the computer came of age we started to see cheaper and easier methods of producing film positives emerge on the commercial market. The draw back or compensation for the lesser cost is: many computer produced laser vellum products and inkjet or laser films are inferior compared to their true film predecessors. Check out the article called “Outputting Artwork To Film” on the Catspit website.

Another important thing to understand is the different types of emulsions available for making your screen. The basic three types of direct emulsions are Diazo, Photopolymer, and Dual Cure. And note that it is UV light that emulsions are most sensitive to. That is important when choosing your light source for making your screens. Your exposure unit, film quality and emulsion will determine your exposure time; therefore having an exposure source that has a good UV output will be beneficial. The three different types of emulsions will have different exposure latitudes and benefits with different light sources. Take a look at the article called “Understanding Emulsion" and "Trouble Shooting Tips For Direct Emulsions".

Sometimes for beginners it can be difficult to understand which product to use for which application. In screen printing we use on a daily basis what are known as consumables. These include but are not limited to inks, emulsions, and chemicals. Here is a helpful article that is in a chart format to make it easy to identify the information you are looking for regarding consumables. It is a quick reference and you should always thoroughly research your products. Browse this chart to get a quick look at consumables, “Consumables Usage Charts; Inks, Emulsions And Chemicals”.

A very important tip I like to give to beginning screen printers is about mesh tension. Using a tightly stretched screen has benefits beyond print resolution. You can achieve better coverage in certain applications with the correct mesh count. Or you can conserve ink by using tightly stretched screens with higher mesh counts to print lighter colored shirts and get great coverage there too. Learn a little more about proper mesh tension by reading the article called “Proper Mesh Tension: Getting Better Stencil Performance” on the Catspit website.

On a last note, artwork is the single most important step to creating an excellent, high quality print. If your artwork is not set up properly for screen printing, not only will the print look bad but the job could be very difficult to print. It is important to educate yourself on how screen printing renderers graphics and understand how to set up your art to easily print what you want. Take the most time working on your art and be sure of it before you even think about going to screen. If you are unsure of how to do the art, seek out a graphic artist who has experience with screen printing. This will save you much materials and headache.

By better understanding the way screen printing is technically applied to achieve optimum results is an asset to your printing success. Learn the principles and techniques of commercial screenprinting and adapt them to your home application. Whether or not you intend on printing tee shirts for fun or for profit, learning the technical details of the process will facilitate your efforts. In the end, this methodology will give you better print results with less effort.

The deadline for the first ever Catspit Productions tee shirt art contest is approaching very quickly. Wednesday is the last day for entries into the contest. No entries will be accepted after 9 a.m. on July 1st.

Make sure to check out the video and contest rules for more information about the contest and how to enter. I appreciate every entry and I thank all who participate to make this contest a success. The outcome of this contest will determine whether or not I will do any more in the future.

Audience participation is very important. Rating and commenting on videos is greatly appreciated. Making comments in the Catspit Guestbook is also appreciated and lets me know how I am doing and who is interested in what. The discussion board on the Catspit Facebook page has been opened and I started a discussion for you to suggest ideas for future videos. Please feel free to stop by, become a fan and suggest some ideas for new screen printing videos for the Catspit Productions YouTube channel.

Thanks for reading!

Another cool video from Catspit Productions has been uploaded to YouTube. This video is called, “How To Screen Print: Glitter Ink On Black Shirts”. In the video I show how a metallic silver, sparkly ink can be printed through 110 mesh onto black tee shirts with great coverage. I admit I get a little excited in this video because I like the ink a lot. The video also compares how printing the silver glitter ink on black is basically the same procedure for white on black with no flash and double hit.

And don’t forget to enter the contest to win custom printed shirts, hinge clamps and more! The contest entry deadline date is June 30th so get to work on that winning artwork. See this video for more info: Contest. Good luck, thanks for your support.

Learn how to screen print with Catspit Productions, LLC!

Hello everyone and welcome to the first ever Catspit Productions Screen Printing Newsletter #1,

First I want to thank all of you for your continued support and thanks for visiting the Catspit Productions website! I appreciate your taking the time to watch my YouTube videos and read the great screen printing articles on the website. Thank you all.

Website Updates:

If you haven’t visited the website in some time, please do so again. There have been many additions and updates since the launching of the website over 1 year ago. It went live with 5 pages and has over 50 pages today.

One of the newest sections is the Article Archive page where all the latest screen printing articles are being posted for easy access by title. Make sure to have a look at that:

http://catspitproductionsllc.com/articlearchives.aspx

Help spread the word about Catspit Productions; connect with us on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter! Embed one of these widgets on your website or social networking page:

http://catspitproductionsllc.com/networkingonline.aspx

New Website Sponsor:

Catspit Productions now has an official sponsor. You can learn more about this development by reading this blog entry:

http://catspitproductionsllc.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!185B454BE8D0048B!312.entry

Google Partnership:

You will notice some Google AdSense ads running on select pages of the Catspit website. Some YouTube videos have also been partnered and now display Google ads. To learn more about why this is happening, please read this blog entry:

http://catspitproductionsllc.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!185B454BE8D0048B!321.entry

Tee Shirt Art Contest:

Last but not least I wanted to make sure you all knew about the first Catspit Productions YouTube tee shirt art contest. You can win custom printed shirts, Speedball hinge clamps for printing and Catspit shirts. Make sure to watch this video and read the contest rules for more information about how to enter and win!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52aPUWoED88

Contest Rules:

http://catspitproductionsllc.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!185B454BE8D0048B!318.entry

Thanks again to everyone for helping make the Catspit Productions internet project a success. I look forward to providing you with more great free information about screen printing in the future.

YouTube has been hounding me for several months now to partner 4 videos. At first, I was very hesitant and I really didn’t want to partner anything on my YouTube channel. I figured that it was a fair trade. My excellent content for some free exposure. But YouTube does not see it this way and they do react if you do not partner.

After refusing the partnership about 3 times, I noticed my activity on the YouTube channel and videos dropped quite drastically. Believe it or not I also noticed a drop in traffic to the website too. Remember that Google owns YouTube. So I got the impression that YouTube and Google tend to “punish” you if you do not accept their partnership offers. I have heard the same thing from other larger YouTube channels as well. Other channels that are far more successful than mine. It seems some of them suffered this punitive action as well and ended up partnering with YouTube in the end for the good of the channel.

That is where we are today. After sticking to my refusal for about 2 months I realized that it was not in the best interest of the YouTube channel or the website. Therefore, as of last week sometime, 4 Catspit videos have been partnered by YouTube and display advertisements in the small pop ups that appear at the bottom of the video player. There will certainly be more videos coming up soon that will be eligible for the same partnership and I will allow it for those as well.

I just figured that cooperating with YouTube and Google will be in the best interest of the entire Catspit internet project and allow for as much exposure as possible through the free venues such as YouTube and the Google search engines which rely on website content. I am not interested in earning money from the YouTube partnership, although any revenue earned will help keep the project going.

I just want to make it clear that this is not about money. It is about getting the most traffic out of these free venues. If no one visits my website or watches my videos, then what is the point of my continuing efforts? I am also going to be adding some Google AdSense to the home page of the Catspit website. I believe this may help with the Google search results.

If you think that Google treats every website fairly and bases search results solely on website content, I think you are mistaken. I believe, with good reason, that cooperating with Google or YouTube will put you in good standing with them. If you partner with them and let them advertise with you, I think they will be more prone to index my content and display it on search results. After all, if they never show your page with AdSense advertisements on it, they will never earn anything from it.

Therefore, as I have said, I am going to play with having some AdSense advertisements on the home page of the Catspit website. I will study the results and see if the traffic improves as a result. If not, I will remove the ads. If it does prove to be beneficial to search engine results on Google, then they will stay on the homepage only.

Please know that I am interested only in increasing traffic to YouTube and the Catspit website. I am not trying to make money from YouTube or Google AdSense. It is just a tactical maneuver which I hope will ensure the continued traffic to my YouTube channel and website. Maybe it will even increase the activity for both venues.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading!

A new video about screen printing has been uploaded to YouTube. This video is an actual production run. It features a fluorescent ink printed on black women’s thermals and black cotton hoodies. You also will se a metallic silver glitter being printed on these garments. With this print run, I set it up on 110 mesh because the fluorescent pink was a high opacity ink. But in the end it looked much better with a hit, flash, hit. But the metallic silver really covers well on most any color so that printed just as intended.

The video is called, “How To Screen Print: Fluorescent Pink On Black Thermals & Hoodies”. Make sure to stop by YouTube and check it out today.

Sometimes when you actually get to press, you will find that things either don’t work out exactly as you intended or that a print just looks better done a specific way. It is up to you to choose which way to print and remember to always consider the happiness of your customer. Ultimately, a happy customer is worth so much more than a quick sale.

Thanks for reading!