Hey friends, Dave here with transfer express, and today we are going to be covering a popular trend
that I see year after year, after year... and that's tone on tone prints! Also known as tonal
prints tone on tone printing is essentially printing your artwork in the same or similar
color to the garment itself maybe just a shade or two darker than the fabric on that garment now it
seems to constantly be trending everywhere you look from retail shelves to etsy because of its
faded vintage or retro look i personally love it for its minimal subtle aesthetic that works
for almost any use from restaurants street wear promo apparel schools clothing brands sportswear
and pretty much any other business out there but enough talking about it today i want to show you
how you can achieve some absolutely stellar results using screen printed transfers or digital
transfers and any shirt so are you ready let's ink it up if you are new to transfer express we
are the world's largest supplier of custom screen printed and digital heat transfers heat presses
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if you haven't already subscribe we're kicking out new videos like this one every single week
now to crush our tone on tone prints there's two things that we're going to need the first a color
selector swatch book or a pantone book and the shirt that we're actually going to be printing on
i always advise to not match colors in this case with those online product photos it's going to
be best to have the actual garment to try to match to now this is really important if you are
trying to do a super subtle black on black print where you're trying to have the print visible
only by the difference in finish of the inks versus the fabric so we have one of my favorite
blank tees right here this is the district dt 104 perfect weight tee this is in the clean
denim colorway a nice muted vintage looking light blue it is a premium feel garment without that
full premium price and these are great blanks from a more fashion forward fit and they have
a removable label perfect for branding with your own inside tag prints which is why we have our tag
along platen all ready to go now since we are using the goof proof screen printed transfers
today from transfer express we've got our color selector swatch book here with the 70 plus
standard ink colors available to use since the vast majority of tone on tone prints are single
color our goof proof screen printed transfers are going to be the best option not only for price but
that real deal screen print feel our ink formula emulates a soft hand screen print and it sits into
the fibers of the t-shirt for a retail ready long lasting print now here with the color selector we
could see this first page of blues the denim is a very close match to the garment but looks like
it may be a little too subtle for what we want to do today so we're going to go over to the darker
blue here royal is a nice fit but maybe a bit too saturated for this faded blue color of the garment
so midnight navy looks to be our pick here today a darker shade than the garment but still in our
blue family for that sweet tone on tone print now once we're happy with our color pick we're going
to order our transfers using easy view online designer we can easily design online using the
huge catalog of clip art and customizable layouts and then we can easily recolor our artwork here
using the ink swatches in this left hand side menu in the edit panel then when our transfers
arrive it's time to press now we packed two full-size designs here along on this sheet
with an inside tag for all of our different sizes and a smaller left chest print now you may notice
that we use this one here at the bottom for a heat printing for beginners video and if you're
brand new to heat printing you should definitely check that one out we didn't print tone on tone
in that video though this midnight navy ink looks great on eddie lighter colored garments like white
or even the natural shirt that we printed in that video since we do have the inside tag that we want
to print today we're going to be using that tag along platen and our autoclam to make it super
easy we're going to be doing three total locations the small made in the usa graphic on the left
chest that inside tag print that i mentioned and then we're going to do that full size graphic with
the eagle right on the back now when we are cutting these graphics out of our gang sheet
i want to mention that we're actually going to remove the made in the usa here on the tag
these shirts are actually made in india and we did plan to use these prints for the volunteer
knitwear blanks because they are made in the usa but we just couldn't get them in
time for this video regardless we could just cut out the bottom part of this tag design
and then the one thing that i love about these district tags is that you could remove the brand
label while keeping the size and fabric makeup and country of origin label that's underneath
no harm no foul and we're still satisfying all of the legal requirements for properly re-labeling
garments while putting our own brand's print right there on it all right now that we are
ready to press we have our hotronix auto clam set to 365 degrees with a press time of just
four seconds and a medium to firm pressure right around that seven or eight on the pressure gauge
on our press so let's get going we're gonna get this one all set on our press love this tag along
platen and the side seams of this district garment because we know that we're going to be loading
on nice and straight so there we're just going to line up these seams right with this awesome
shoulder and neck shape and get that one straight on there we'll look down each side to ensure
that on both sides our side seam is evenly spaced so we know that we're straight all the way down
then with the tag along platen the real magic just lifting up and over and there we go we're going
to fold that one out of the way to give us this nice little area here to print our inside tag now
we're also going to do our left chest the inside tag but we're going to pre-press this all first
just removing any moisture and wrinkles from our garment a quick little four second
prepress and we're gonna go ahead and lay down our inside tag print
and our left chest print now what i'm gonna do is go from where
the shoulder seam meets the collar right here on the top and draw a line straight down
then i'm going to lay this centered right on that line that we made and noted and we're going
to look about four fingers down from the collar to the top of the graphic which is going to be
just under the paper by about a quarter inch so that looks good right there and i want
to double check my placement one more time just make sure we're nice and centered and
now we're all set let's go ahead and press this two locations with just one press so super easy
and a four second press we're just going to peel away
the carrier when the press opens and there you have it
left chest print and that inside tag now what we're going to do is just back this
up and we're going to print on the back all the same just how we loaded it on the first time we're
just going to do it again on the back side this one i'm holding up to the light just to ensure
we know exactly where our center line is and just like that looks great we'll crease the top
all the way down to the bottom increase the bottom now we're just going to put this one right on here
top of the graphic is about an inch down from where our carrier starts so just going to keep
that one in mind and we're going to do this one about four or five fingers down so four fingers at
the top of the sheet looks a-okay and perfect i'm going to get that down and we're going to go ahead
and press this one we did pre-press already so we're just going to press this one right on here
four second press and we'll just peel the carrier away immediately
and there we have it absolutely awesome super stellar print right here look how great that
looks you could see just how quickly we printed all three of these locations here with just
a couple presses and now we've got our retail ready shirt ready to go screen printed transfers
are just phenomenal you get the same look feel and wash ability as a traditional screen print
all without the hassle and messy clean up i mean would you screen print and this no i
printed shirts just completely fine no worries about ink getting on my nice clothes and talk
about all of those time savings too but do you have tone on tone printing tips of your own
questions maybe suggestions for an upcoming video let us know down in the comment section below
also worth a mention free samples we used our most popular transfer type today that's our goof
proof screen printed transfers but if you haven't tried any of those or any of the different heat
transfers that we produce here at transfer express we would love to send you some free samples we'll
have a link to those right here and down in the description below here at transfer express we are
always happy to help share heat printing tips tricks inspiration and how-to videos not just
on printing t-shirts but marketing your brand too be sure you are subscribed right here to stay up
to date with the videos that we're dropping every single week but until then i'm dave happy pressing