Happy New Year 2012

Happy New Year!


Sorry I've been missing this week. I'll be back in the saddle next week with regular posts throughout the week.

Stay safe, sane and sober.


Martiel

Weekly Gratis 2011.4: Overcome by Tinfoil

Today is recovery day from holiday cooking, cleaning and running like a mad woman, so I am not posting a weekly gratis today. BUT, check in next Monday because I will have something truly spectacular to share with you.

Here is a hint...

Do you struggle with how to calculate the sales price for your crafts so they will sell? I've got a solution for you.

That is all for now.

MB~

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SALE TODAY - $5 Friday in the Shop

Today is another $5 Friday in the Sewmantra shop. Check out discounted items, and get the deals before they are gone!

http://sewmantra.etsy.com

Hat Giveaway WINNERS!! (Round II)

CONGRATULATIONS WINNERS! (Round II)

Our new winning numbers are 85, 30, and 89. Names are listed below. Please make sure to contact me before the deadline so you can claim your custom hat.

December Giveaway Winners

 Lucy Carter

Lauren Mullen

Marc Schweitzer

Please contact me directly to arrange construction & delivery of your hat - you have until 12-Noon EST on Saturday , December 24, 2011 to make contact via EMAIL. If you do not, your winnings will be forfeited and another person will be selected in your stead.

As for those of you who didn't win this time, don't despair! We have giveaways happening all the time so check in often, you never know what we'll be giving away. I'll be posting our January giveaway soon!

Thanks for playing, see you next time.

 You can feel confident about our contests. We do not share personal information about our clients, customers, vendors, or prize winners with anyone, ever! Your information will be kept strictly confidential.

Weekly Gratis 2011.3

As promised, here is the delivery - garment labels for everyone!


Garment tags are a hot topic and for good reason. I've done some research and come across conflicting information. So, I'm offering a solution to the void that I have not seen yet. My reasons are simple. some claim it's best to order labels from a professional label making company from the get go. Others claim that making your own with printable fabric is the best way, but then I was only limited to the color of printable fabric in the store.

In my experience, I have found that if you are a start-up, and a small one (as is often the case) a reasonable and nice looking label is what you need right now!

After much toiling, I have come across a way to get very nice garment labels (with or without a logo) until you can afford to buy labels at a quantity of 2000-5000 at once, which in the end could have quite a hefty impact on your wallet if you don't have an income source to back you up.

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Here at Sewmantra, this is how I make my garment tags. And BONUS, they are machine washable!

Project Specifications:

Time: The first time will take you longer than subsequent ones - just plan on it.
Things to know: If you do not know how to use a computer, ask someone for help. This project requires you to understand basic graphic design, how to upload a picture, use text and convert .jpeg images.
Level of Difficulty: Depending on your computer skills, this could be rated as moderate to very difficult. If you have questions about the project, ask me, ask friends, the community of artists and crafters love to help!

Need help, post a comment or email me directly.


Step 1: Supplies You'll Need

11/2"[3.8cm] Wide Polyester Ribbon

• 1 Roll of 100% polyester, 100% nylon or similar ribbon of your color choice. Do not pick sheer, wired, or other fancy, frilly ribbon; you want something durable that will stand-up to wear and tear and needs to be machine washable. These types of ribbons can be found in any craft store, or even at big box stores  in their craft departments (i.e. Target, Kmart, & Walmart). NOTE: When choosing your ribbon, pick something that will be wide enough to work with for design/logo. If you are using just words, thinner ribbon like 1/2"-1" [1.3-2.5cm]. If you are using a picture, or will be stacking words like our label, use a ribbon that is closer to 1.5"-2" [3.8-5.1cm].
• 1 Package of iron-on printer transfer sheets for light or dark. You can find these as Walmart, Target and craft stores such as Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and Joann's Fabrics. NOTE: If you chose a dark ribbon like navy blue, black, dark green or the like, make sure you buy the transfers for DARK FABRICS. At Sewmantra, we use a light cream colored ribbon, so we buy the transfers for light colored fabrics. (Picture of a brand available below, but by no means do you have to use this one, it is just the one I happen to use this time).
• A computer with a design program as simple as LibreOffice Draw or Microsoft Publisher or as advanced as GIMP or Adobe Photoshop.
• An iron where the steam feature (if it has one) can be turned off.
• An inkject printer.
• Ironing board or other flat surface to use an iron on. Make sure your iron won't damage the surface.
• Scissors and/or paper cutter.
• Ruler and a pencil.

  

  One type of iron-on printer transfer sheets avail.

Step 2: Design Your Logo

• This is an important marketing and advertising tool for you, so make it creative, interesting, or just make it straightforward and easy to read. No matter what you do, just make sure that it has these two (2) CRITICAL pieces of information. These bits of info you want in the hands of your customers:

1. The name of your company or just your name.
2. Your website or where they can get your stuff (i.e. at least list a phone #, email address, address of your brick and mortar store, etc.).

• Three Reason you want a logo or awesome garment tag:

Sewmantra Logo Detail

1. If your product(s) are out and about in the world doing what they do best, being worn by other people who love and admire them. Most likely, these people will tell their friends and other people they meet about your products. Wouldn't it be great for them to say, "Hey, actually, the website is right inside this hat, let me look for you so you can check out his/her great stuff, I love mine." Voila! Need I say more?
2. Garment tags also give a garment a professional look. They tell people your products are worthy of their attention, of being paid for... so look at me!
3. This is about hand-made labels specifically, meaning those of you who plan on doing this project: a hand-made label gives a garment something unique and different than anything anyone can find in a store. It shouts to the world I am a one-of-a-kind.

I'm certain you can come up with other reasons for having a garment label, so share them!


Step 3: Preparing to Print the Labels.

Sewmantra Labels 6 rows of 4

This part of the process is a bit tricky, so I'm going to try to be as clear as possible here without confusing the feathers out of you.

• You've now created a sheet of logos. At Sewmantra, I create six rows of four labels. (If you'd like to use our template, you may do so, just zip me an email, I'd be happy to send it your way).
• Next I save this document as a .jpeg
• Then I open a new drawing/publisher document (or similar program) and I insert my new .jpeg image I just created. I make sure I stretch it to fit it to the page size, and using my rulers double and sometimes triple checking to make sure my labels are the right size. (Thankfully, once you get this all set up you won't have to it again, well, unless you delete it).

HEY THERE READER! Next part is Uber IMPORTANT

• DON'T PRINT YET, YOU NEED TO MIRROR THE IMAGE BEFORE PRINTING, SO WHEN YOU IRON IT ON, IT FACES THE RIGHT SIDE OUT.
• Next either set your printer options to print your image mirrored or simply flip your image so everything reads backward.
• Now, do a TEST PRINT. This is good for a few reasons, first and foremost, to make sure that it is printing the correct way on the sheet so when you load your precious transfer sheet it will not be a waste. Do as many test prints as needed and make sure to use the front and back of test pages, no point in using a new sheet each time you do a test. NOTE: When you do the test print, one way to make sure your logo is going to fit, is to take your ribbon, unravel a little bit and lay it over the paper where the logo is. If is overlaps, then you need to make it smaller.
• Lastly, following the instructions from your iron-on printing transfer sheet's packaging and print your logos.

TA-DA! The hardest part is finished, now the crafty part - I know, it's your favorite.

Sewmantra Labels (flipped) and ready to meet ribbons

Step 4: Iron On your Lable/Logo

Set up your ironing board or ironing surface and start heating up your iron. REMEMBER, TURN OFF THE STEAM FEATURE IF YOUR IRON HAS THIS, IT WILL RUIN YOUR TRANSFERS.

• Cut your transfers into the appropriate width strips. My rule for cutting is, when you only have one chance, measure, check, measure again, cut. To be quite honest, when cutting these, I actually use a paper cutter. It makes life so much easier! 

strips of labels on transfer sheets

• Now that I've finished prepping the label, I'm ready for application of my transfer label strips to the ribbon. Before I do this, I make sure I don't need to make any adjustments like trimming the transfer paper.

Next we are moving into the second to last step before we are done with this project. Hang in there, almost done.


Step 5: Applying Labels to Ribbon

• Your iron should be ready to go and so should your ironing surface. If not, go prep that now.
• Now you need to lay out your ribbon flat. If it has creases in it because of packaging or storage, iron it so that it lays flat. Then with the wrong side up and the printed side down, place your strip of transfer paper over your ribbon making sure that it is a snug fit. NOTE: You do not want your transfer paper to be wider than your ribbon. If it is narrower, no harm, no foul. Remember, whatever the transfer is transferred onto, it will be permanent, so double check before putting down that iron.
• Using a steady hand, press down gently with the iron over the transfer on the ribbon. Move up and down the entire piece for about 20 seconds (this time may vary with different brands of transfers, make sure to check before proceeding). 
• Make sure you get all the edges, they are the trickiest - and once you have leave it flat to cool. Do not move it until it has cooled so that you don't distort your logo text/images.
• After the ribbon has cooled, the paper will still be on and the ribbon should be a bit stiffer in feel, but will be flat. Using your fingernail, peel back the paper slowly to reveal your glorius label.

Slowly peal off paper backing from transfer sheet

• Now trim your section off your roll of ribbon. This is so you can work with it in a manageable size. At this time, you should have a strip of labels. You have only one step left before you can start using them!

Sewmantra labels - finished!

Step 6: Label Finishing

• To finish your labels first cut them into their final size.

Sized Sewmantra Labels

• Once you have trimmed each label into it's final size, use some CLEAR fabric glue or CLEAR tacky glue to seal the edges so they do not fray.
• Put some glue on a plate. NOTE: Do not use a paper plate, use a ceramic plate or plastic plate. This glue will seep into a paper plate. Put down a strip of glue and do not use too much, you can always add more later, but you cannot put it back in the bottle. Now you are going to apply the glue the length of the edge where you cut. Using either a small brush or just gently dipping the cut only edges in the glue. You do not have to finish the top and bottom edges of the ribbon as they should be hemmed already.

•  Now, using paperclips, clothesline clips, or some other means hang your new labels for the next hour to insure that the glue sets and dries. 

You now have fantastic labels, at a great price and you can change them up if you get board with them. What more could you ask for?

Hope this weeks gratis was helpful. Best of luck to artists and crafters making labels out there!

Today's Whatever

I'm sitting in Wegman's grocery store in the cafe/market seating area writing to you all sipping on my coffee preparing for my supply outing today. The weekly gratis will be posting tomorrow as I am not at home and I forgot my camera cable.Ugh. So no photos. But, I can tell you that I will be telling you about something awesome! I will be sharing with you how to make your own garmet labels so they look professional, in color, with or without a logo and can be sewn by hand or machine into almost any garment.

I couldn't think of a title for my post today, so there you go.













Look for that tomorrow.


As for today, I want to share with you some photos of the schupture garden adjacent to the National Mall in Washington D.C.

       


However, as I was leaving, I noticed a sad little hat on a bench. It was left behind by its owner. It looked so lonely sitting there, I had to take a picture and share it with all of you.