Holy Crap! A Field Trip!!

Back in the Day! Syrup in a can... in addition to Jams and Jellies, Sunny Jim had a full line of snack foods and p-nut butter. The Best!

Remember Mondays when you were a kid in elementary school? Dreaded.

But sometimes, you had a permission slip to go on a Field Trip. I got to go to a lot of cool places on field trips… but my Favorite was probably the Sunny Jim Jam and Jelly Factory in Seattle… well, until today. ( say it fast to hear the commercial aloud: “ Sunny Jim Sunny Jim Sunny Jim Jam And Jelliiiiies” sheesh that has to be 40 years ago!? Catchy.)

Today I got the full-interactive-hands on-fish out of water-Regis and Kelly treatment at the Print Shop!

As you may have heard, we are pumping up the VOLUME (yay-AHHHHH) on our website. We have lots and lots of ideas… and one of those is t-shirts! John, (of www.klingsart.com) partnered with Graphic Marketing in winter park to get us some press time!

John is a screen printer by trade, and so was up last night making films.

I am ecstatic as I write! By tomorrow evening we will have a handful of samples to show about and wear brazenly… taunting on lookers.

But how about that Shop!? I don’t know if you know how all that visual imagery plastered all over every flat surface on Earth gets there. It comes from places like Graphic Marketing! To me, it looked like a big room chock full of opportunity for dismemberment. Not small machines to run off a few dozen news letters, kids. Big hulking Giants of machines with lots of grabby, pokey out spots, and large and small dangerous looking buttons. The kinds of things that you wonder, How did they get THAT up here? Thankfully, there were also plenty of “stupid people please stay to the center of the room” placards and stickers for my safety and amusement… yeah, like I’m gonna get my tie caught in THERE!

Scott poses with a monster

Today we put it all to work. An exceptionally successful dress rehearsal. John and V.J. were the professionals on the job. I was the on site reporter, lunch getter and (I really think it’s the technical term for the job) catcher bitch.

I’ve worked on small jobs with John before, but those have always been in our garage or living room. This was Much bigger… like the difference between a 20 gallon fish tank, and the adventures of Jacques Cousteau! (bloop bloop bloop… “Ve approach ze narwal vith the utmost of caution…”)

Here’s a quick primer, in case you’ve never been privy to the creation of a rock star t-shirt.

The image is transferred to an acetate film. So that it can be transferred again to a screen for printing.

The screen is coated with a photo sensitive emulsion, and left to dry in the dark.

The Artist known as John coats a screen with photo sensitive emulsion... note the BakerMadness Signature shade of green!

The emulsion is hardened by Ultra Violet Light. Wherever the acetate image is placed, the emulsion is not exposed, so stays soft.

Science Quiz: What is the most common and popular origin of Ultra Violet (UV) Light? Correct, the Sun. But taking your screens out into the sun isn’t really practical. Instead, you need one of these… I call it “Sun in a box”.

they got a tiny peice of the Sun and they put it in this box, to make art and to blind bad guys.

A UV producing arcing light source is contained inside a black metal box. A heavy blast shield is lowered to Unleash the High Energy Beams toward the screen, and any super villian type bad guys. After 30 seconds in the same room with the blast shield down, I have a tan that is 1.5x deeper than when I arrived.

Sun in a box is released with full fury!

Hosin' it Out!

The acetate film is removed and the soft part of the image is hosed out, leaving a place for the ink to pass through. An elaborate expensive stencil. Pin holes and edges are covered with “block out”.

Checking for pin holes

As we were on a first time out test run, we hadn’t done an inventory on our color choices. Our logo is Chocolate brown. There was no brown ink, so john made it… for the test, we ended with the most scrumptious looking chocolate brown…

John Makes Brown

Each color in a screen printed image gets it’s OWN SCREEN. We have 6 colors in our logo. This is where the tricky part shows up. All the screens have to be aligned EXACTLY for the colors to come together in a single image. It’s called “registration” and when it’s off… it’s no good.

The Test. Sprinkles out of registration

We tore through about 20 Goodwill donation tester shirts to arrive at the final image. <not pictured>

Back at the Sunny Jim Jam and Jelly factory… we all got a sampler size jar of strawberry jam to take home, which I forbid my mother from opening.

Today I got an even bigger takeaway.

Many Thanks to Graphic Marketing… V.J. , Ken and Bram! Your work is terrific!

And also many thanks to John Kling at www.klingsart.com your work is Beyond Terrific (and you make a wicked mean salsa)

So as you can see, we aren’t just talking anymore…

Yay-AHHHHHHHHH!