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.