Do you really want screen printing?

Screen printing is one of those terms that people often use in a general way. Someone may say "let's get some shirts screen printed" without really knowing about the different technologies available for printing stuff on shirts. They might not actually mean screen printing if they knew the choices they had.

It's not uncommon for people to come to our shop and say something like, "We'd love to print our graphic in color but we can't afford all the set-up charges." Screen printers often have to charge expensive set-up fees. When we tell customers that we print in full color without any set-up charges, the lights go on. Suddenly they can do what they thought was out of the question.

We do digital garment printing. We can print photos, full-color graphics, and gradient blends. The only real limitation with DTG is that it does not print opaque inks like white on black. What's printed must be darker than the color of the fabric it's printed on. It's great for printing on white or lighter toned colors and you can create some wonderful effects with darker inks on midtone shirts like medium gray, olive green, and blues.

With screen printing you can get light colors on dark fabric but your choice in color is very limited and you often have to pay set-up charges per color. With DTG you can print gradient rainbows but need to print on lighter fabrics for the ink to show through. And we do not charge set-up fees.

Between what we do in-house and what our partners do, we can help you choose the right print medium for the requirements of your project. We can get you covered with direct to garment printing, embroidery, screen printing or heat transfers.

The Mad Hatter is at it again

Our embroidery machines are humming away today on baseball caps for South Salem Little League.

We're always happy to answer any of your questions about embroidery or garment printng. Check out our website for more information.

Two hats are better than one

Here is another example of how we can achieve different looks from one digitized-for-embroidery file. By changing the thread colors and by changing the surface that a file is embroidered upon, we can get some very different results.

To find out more about what digitizing is and why we need it for embroidery, go here.

If you already have a digitized embroidery file, we can customize it to suit your new needs. We can also add to it, such as putting in more text.

When we have digitized files created for ew clients or new graphics, we like to anticipate how the file might be used in the future. For instance, if you order polo shirts, we think ahead to if you might order hats, which require a special technique over flat surfaces.

For any questions about embroidery, please give Jolene a call at (503) 365-1955.

A New Look at Advisors

Here's a new way to look at advisors. Ad visors. Visors that bear your business name.

At Creativity On we have found that embroidered caps or visors make great promotional giveaways. It's one of the best values in advertising, primarily because these are things people use. They don't toss them into the recycle bin. People like wearing hats and visors, and if your business name is emblazoned on them, each cap is out there promoting your identity.

Pricing on hats and visors depends on many factors such as hat quality, complexity of the graphic, single or multi-location embroidery, and quantity ordered. Our experience is that if you invested $500 in hats, you'd get more bang for your advertising buck than $500 invested in print advertising. And if you wanted to you could sell the hats and in effect end up getting your advertising for free!

A Little Demonstration of DTG Printing

The kind of printing we do in-house is called direct-to-garment or DTG printing. It's a very sophisticated inkjet printer specifically designed to print onto fabric.

Unlike screen-printing, which applies one color at a time and can opaque, DTG printing can print millions of colors in one pass. The sprayed on ink is influenced by the fabric color. As you can see in the photos above, the graphic looks different on the tan-green fabric than it does on the textured gray shirt. The graphic has not changed; the shirt color has.

In DTG printing, the white in your graphic prints transparent, letting the color of the fabric show through. On a white shirt, the skateboarder in the graphic would appear white as would the lettering for "Lebanon Skate Park." You can see this effect in the top photo.

Once you understand this principle, you can design for how your graphic will print on color. We can print out a standard color chart on a colored fabric to see if we want to keep colors as they are or change them to a different hue.

Field Trip to 295 Church Street Condominiums

Went out Saturday afternoon to visit Chris and Gerry Stewart who were holding open house at the newly completed 295 Church Street Condominiums. The complex features 27 one and two bedroom condos on the third, fourth, and fifth floors; the first two floors are commercial including the new CCTV home.

The whole idea of urban living is still quite new to Salem, but it's absolutely great for certain people in certain situations, such as people who do not want to spend time taking care of a home with a yard. At 295 Church your front or back yard could be Pringle Creek Park! Let someone else do the work and you just go out, find a nice bench, and enjoy the scenery.

On my visit today I was particularly taken by unit 509. It's on the so-called City side (as opposed to the Park side.) Normally I would have thought that I'd always want to look out at Pringle Creek Park, which is particularly pretty to me. But this unit totally surprised me with some great views looking down Church Street. There's a gorgeous row of mature trees to look at (I expect these will be fabulous in the fall) as well as lots of sky for cloud-and weather-watching (there's also a covered deck so you wouldn't get soaked in the rain or snow.)


I have not yet seen the Meridian Complex, being a similar concept, but as people came through the open house, we heard comments about how spacious and light and bright 295 Church complex was in comparison. If I were in the market for the urban lifestyle, I'd be looking here. The location is great for easy walking to Bush Park, the main library, Willamette U, the State Capitol, the Convention Center, and of course all the local businesses.

There are daily open houses there if you want to see them for yourself.

What's on the work table today

Photographs do not quite capture the sparkle and sheen of metallic threads, but at least it gives you an idea of what we're up to today at Creativity On! Different thread choices can give a unique appearance to your embroidery. In this one the thrill of 4th of July fireworks is translated to the glittery effect on the fabric.

Thread choices are independent of the whole digitizing process. That means that if you have a digitized file already, we can change the threads for you and give you an entirely different look from what you may have had embroidered before. This can be especially fun for special occasions, like sparkles for 4th of July picnics, summer colors for summer weather, fall colors for fall weather, etc.

We're always happy to answer any of your questions about embroidery or garment printng. Check out our website for more information.

Make your dream shirt a real shirt

You might not know that in addition to embroidery, we at Creativity On do direct-to-garment or digital printing. Essentially we can take photos or works of graphic art that you send us from your computer and print them onto cotton fabrics like t-shirts.

This is not what's traditionally called screen printing. In screen printing you can only print one color at a time. You often encounter set-up fees for printing more than one color.

DTG works like an inkjet printer in terms of how it applies color. You get all colors including gradient color blends and photos. The only limitation is that like your home inkjet, DTG ink is affected by the color of fabric (or paper) you print on. If you print on a white surface it will look different than if you print on a pink or a blue surface.

If you have some photos or graphic files on your computer you think would make a great shirt, let us make it real for you.

Check out our website for more details on direct-to-garment printing.

Today on the work table at Creativity On!

Yes we do hats! This embroidery is based on the logo chosen by the group raising funds for the Lebanon Skate Park (that would be Lebanon, Oregon.) We also printed a bunch of t-shirts based on a similar graphic.

The skateboarder is taken from a photo a student took. They then made a silhouette of the image in Photoshop. Text was added. One version of the graphic was used to print shirts while this silhouette version was digitized for embroidery. Once the file was readied for embroidery, Jolene can change thread colors and hat colors to come up with different looks and options. For instance, she can morph the yellow into red or silver or gold or whatever thread color the client wants.

Real Estate Photos from the Creativity On Guy

Joshua just posted a collection of real estate photos to his Facebook site. Joshua is available for hire for real estate photography, presentation and flyer creation, ad copywriting, and any other desktop publishing you may want.

Congratulations to Winderemere Pacific West Properties

Windermere Pacific West Properties is now representing sales for the 295 Church Street Condominiums complex. Congratulations to you!

If you like the idea of living downtown where the action is, this is a great time to check it out. Have the whole Pringle Creek Park as your front or back yard! Easy walking to all the attractions in the downtown area. Urban living is a bit of a new concept around Salem, but this is a great start.

Man, that photo is soooo Joshua.

Blue River in Oregon

Here is another embroidery creation from Creativity On!

If you want to have some embroidery done, or even want to talk about your ideas for a future embroidery project, please contact Jolene. Visit our website for more information including contact info.

We love making people happy

One of the joys of our business is making people happy. We do that by exceeding expectations. Whether we're embroidering a vest or printing a t-shirt or working on a real estate presentation, part of our thrill is turning out work that wows our clients.

A client today came by to see a stitch-out of some embroidery that Jolene was doing for their nonprofit. They had been using someone else for five years and had gotten mediocre service yet at a compellingly good price. Finally the services they got reached unacceptable, which is when they found us. When the client saw what Jolene was doing, she beamed, "This looks so professional!"

Having been in the embroidery business for over ten years Jolene is, of course, a consummate professional. But sometimes when the prices are so reasonable, people expect the work to be inferior, and our client had been going to someone with a storefront. When people go to a storefront, they expect more professionalism, even when they don't always get it.

So we were very happy to see and hear our client's excitement over the progress of her order. We love making people happy.

Happy Ending

The woman who was shocked at being quoted $100 for an embroidered zipped hooded sweatshirt from a wedding shop did business with us instead. She still spent $100, but she got a lot more product. She got the hoodie and four embroidered t-shirts for the bridesmaids and maid of honor.

Creativity on...

T-shirts are gone

Thank you to all of you who requested free shirts in our last giveaway. They've all gone away...

Fond of their prices?

We just got a call from someone who found us by searching the Internet. She went looking for us because she was shocked (as were we) that a wedding store wanted to charge her $100 for a full-zip embroidered sweatshirt. ("And it was nothing special. Just an ordinary sweatshirt and plain text.")

Our price was around $32.

In this case it paid for her to get a second opinion!

Free t-shirts

Visit our website and win a free t-shirt. This one's a great gift for your favorite Dad.

Welcome to our new Creativity On blog!

Welcome to our new blog. In our quest to share some of the interesting things we do, we have decided to use blogging as one of our tools for reaching out of all of you.

We embroider logos, designs, and sayings on a wide variety of products—tee shirts, polo shirts, fleece, denim, vests, jackets, aprons, hats, totes, blankets, whatever. We embroider on business, team, group, or individual attire.

We look forward to this being a friendly, informal place to hang out and to give some behind-the-scenes color to our business.