What's up everybody its Matt with Mikey Designs and welcome to another edition
of a video still trying to figure this out
welcome to another edition of an inside glimpse as to what it's like running a
screen printing business from home there I think that works stick around will
will show you what we got going on today
first things first so time for a little bit of that coming yeah That moment when
you realize you forgot to put coffee in the coffee maker got a little bit more
manly of a coffee cup today now we got some coffee going let's open up the show
time for that daily commute don't miss traffic jams that's for sure hey check
this out it's a shop gnomes apron it's pretty awesome isn't it ah that's more
like it sure it's pretty out today on the agenda
today we've got a client coming over to pick up this piece of film so they can
screen print on some latex balloons which is pretty cool have to show you a
quick video that the stairs to the office and the office view it's a pretty
good life can't complain alright now that I've had a little bit of time to
kind of collect my thoughts put together to-do lists
dodged a digitizers phone call from overseas probably about 20 times looks
like what we have on the agenda today is need to separate a bunch of artwork for
a few clients follow up with the client let her know the status of her order we
have some embroidery projects out because we we outsource those but you
know we we kind of for what kind of we do offer embroidery
allows us to do shirts and embroidery for our clients we don't really make a
ton of money off of it but it allows them to just come to us for for all
their needs got a bunch of screens to wash out and and coat and expose gonna
check up on some shipping make sure people got there got their product and
just want to follow up see if they're happy with them and then I'm gonna get
the shop gnome working on some blog material and I've been working on a new
website design I'm gonna work on that a little bit while the screens are drying
coating them you know how long that process is if you don't out there you're
about to find out and then we're gonna print some tees later later today and so
it's gonna be a pretty busy day stick around we'll we'll show you well give
you a glimpse as to what it's like time to do some steps
we've got our separations all finished I've got film printing out I'm gonna let
this do its thing and time to wash out some screens hmm this part always takes
a while here the pick up your film it's yes it's quite the drive come back
tomorrow well you have a good one all right so that's another thing taken care
of Cynthia came and picked up her film a little backstory on her it was the
company I worked for or for 14 or 15 years before I started screen printing
full-time and they're really good people small family-owned business and I was
the art director there and I did all their packaging artwork there their
website design their sells collateral but I did a lot of filing with the
uspto.gov which is all the copyright and patent website official government
website and man it's it's been a blessing having them as a clients I said
more my wife regularly so I have to show you their operation one of these days I
think I still have a video of their one of their screen it they screen for it on
balloons that's one of the reasons I decided to get into screen printing is I
knew how to do it a lot of stuff was just simple one color stuff but let me
see if I can find that video it's kind of cool
all right we got our separations done I know what mesh screens I need I have
them pulled aside now it's time to reclaim screens my favorite part of the
whole process it's probably yours too let's go
oh yeah yeah starting to pick up now so they had a good after oh yeah yeah so
that and you know the holidays and all that schools and churches we do a lot of
business with them and so you know everybody's getting back at it and
putting their orders in so yeah all right have a good one
that was our UPS guy he's really cool I was gonna get him on camera but yeah
maybe that's that
all right now that we have our screens all washed out it's time to drop off
some hoodies for embroidery but first I need to make myself look a little more
presentable good to go now
okay so we're back from picking up the hats they look pretty awesome
I think our clients will be happy with them and now it's time to coat some
screens let's do it
yummy look like a creamsicle
all right our screens are all coded time to go back to the office okay and we are
back I'm in the office screens are coded while they are drying what I'm going to
go ahead and do is work on revamping our website it's something I've been working
on for for quite some time I think it's looking really great so once we're
finished with it I'll show you the the end product and it would be great to get
your feedback and let us know what you think about it all so I'm going to go
ahead and do some video editing I've recorded some tutorials as well as some
video logs that way we can continue to help you guys in your your own excursion
into starting your own screen printing business
I hope these videos are really helping and so stick around we're going to
expose some screens and we're gonna put some t-shirts give you a little bit more
of a glimpse into what it's like running your own screen printing business so
stick around I almost forgot there are some there's been two really cool things
that that have come up here recently three things really so one of the things
is today wallows in the middle of washing out screens I was contacted by a
manufacturer of plastics all screen printing ink I'm trying to think of
where they're at it I believe Nashville Tennessee or I'll
share it with you I'm probably not right but they are a plus saw ink manufacturer
and they make an all-in-one ink that can be used for cotton again be used for
5050 and polyester 1:1 ink for all of them and I thought that was really cool
because one of the difficulties for probably any shop manual shop like ours
is using polyester ink it tends to be like peanut butter if any of you guys
out there have used poly ink for printing on 100%
polyester it's really thick and so it's kind of hard to work with they said it
was really creamy easy to work with die die migration is an issue so they're
gonna they're gonna send us a sample and I'm going to take that sample and do a
an unbiased review what I think about it and if it works out great we're we're
gonna do some test prints run them through the dryer wash them see how it
holds up and if we're happy with it we'll let you know our results but we're
gonna share that with you all so it's a couple things that have just randomly
come up is a because we do mark it on YouTube we've had a publication and
we'll share that with you here in the future but a publication came to us and
they're gonna put us in their magazine and I think that's really cool they're
they've been asking about marketing on on YouTube so hey guys out there if if
you are a small business owner marketing on YouTube is a great thing it will it's
brought us new clients it's we're gonna be featured in a screen printing
magazine I'll disclose who they are once it's published and then also here
locally in Houston a-another it's not a magazine it's kind of trying to think
about what they really are but they basically kind of feature small time mom
and pop artists just that are part of the Houston community not not these big
corporations they don't feature any of those type of companies but it's little
guys like us and so they they want to feature an article about us and so we
we've taken our time to reply back to to both of these these publications and
we're really excited about it we're gonna share that with you as well
okay enough don't with that list let's get back to it all right everybody it's
that time of the day to expose some screens I have my film output
these are I've kind of separated them into two separate sections these are my
films for color these are for my white basis or white prints only and so I have
mine I'm using 230 mesh for color and then a variation between 200 and 156
mesh for white for doing white basis and then white tops we got the exposure unit
all nice and cleaned up let's expose some screens
alright now that our screens are exposed we're gonna put them outside in the Sun
so they'll dry a little quicker let's do it
oh and setting them out in the Sun not only helps dry them quicker but it also
posts hardens to them little tip all right now it's time to set the press and
print some t-shirts next we have our each set aside that we're going to use
for these three jobs and I have a couple squeegees clean as you can see there's a
there's a lot of squeegees that I'll leave certain colors on because we use
them often
alright guys that's about it for the day we got two out of three orders taken
care of one of them's for a friend of ours and they can wait until tomorrow
they're more than happy to and we're going to ship out the two orders that we
we took care of I would have liked to shown you this order but hey it's my
understanding that sometimes you show off who your clients are out there
people will go after them but we got a lot done today and so I'm gonna go back
up to the office continue working on the website some of these videos and in the
meantime I hope you guys enjoyed this video like subscribe click the like
button subscribing all that good stuff share it with your friends that way we
can continue to do these videos for you y'all have a good one peace
you