Saturday, May 17, 2008

State of the Art

It's been awhile since my last entry....I was not able to log in. I got to remember...this is connected to my atowngraphics at gmail account. And the password is liondrumsflag.

So much has happened since my last entry...let me see..it's been seven whole months.

I just printed JBBP's poster. It's the second time we printed this poster. We did it last year too. It appears that it has been profitable for the program for their silent auction.

We decided not to do the poster printing in the classroom this time because I just read the fine print on the container of ink. Don't want kids to be around this stuff.

So we went into the class and showed my prints. I was surprised that they actually listened for that long. I kept it simple to these third graders by repeating, "I drew that!", and explained to them how I copied this and that.

What was really tough was that I had no screen with working mesh. A lot of the mesh from our previous project has ripped from being moved around too much. The week before I went out the Midwest Sign Supplies and got some mesh. Wow...it's $45 a yard now! I can get two screens per yard. With tax and all, that comes out to $ 25 a screen. I got four yards which was over $200.

My film positive connection in now Dolphin Graphics...and they charge $40 per film! Whereas last year through Sherman it was like $25.

I bought squeegees for myself. 2-14", 4-10", 2-8" and that came out like $200 also!

After I did the math with screen prep and all, it cost us $358. (not counting my squeegees)

It was interesting to see an inkjet textile printer at Midwest. It's made by Brother. It costs over $20K...now that's no small change. Any thing digital nowadays have a shelf life of three years. So that would be $7K a year. That machine has to generate $21K of profit a year to stay afloat.

My days as a screenprinter are numbered.



Here's another postcard I did for Day of Remembrance. I dunno...sometimes I feel like such a sucker for community causes.



A simple shirt for SFBC. A very small run.