I recently signed up as a backer for an amazing new method of printing on tees and other natural materials. It’s called Lumitype, and this system will enable me to create AND print my own graphic tees and other apparel without the need for outrageously expensive screen printing equipment.

The method involves turning your photographs or art into negatives, printing the negatives on a transparency, applying the Lumitype ink over the transparency, and setting your piece in the sun to develop, where the ink/dye permanently becomes part of the fabric to which it’s been applied, resulting a wearable and extremely durable piece of art that will not eventually crack or flake off like other printing processes sometimes do.

I will be receiving my first order of supplies sometime in September, and hope to have some terrific designs out in time for the upcoming holiday season, once I  have mastered the process.

Being able to print the designs myself means I will finally be able to apply for an artisan space at the historical and iconic Portland Saturday Market. Very exciting stuff for a freelance digital artist like myself!

Kred vs Klout. Both claim to be social media tools designed to help you understand your influence. I recently discovered Kred and thought to myself “Oh no, not another ploy to rob me of my time,” but, as it turns out, Kred is vastly more useful in the information it provides regarding my social influence. It shows me exactly which activities raised my score and the activities that raise scores actually are useful in helping me engage with my followers.

The reward for using Kred is being able to see clearly spelled out which of your interactions have impact. The reward for using Klout is an occasionally useful freebie for doing what you already do – interacting with your followers. Klout is more like a game of chance. You do your social networking and hope. There are no clear indicators as to why your score rises or falls, but when it rises far enough, you can occasionally get a useful freebie – like the awesome business cards I got from Moo.com. However, most of the perks I’ve seen offered for low-end influencers like me are crap.

I will keep using Klout in the off-chance a perk comes up that I can actually use, but for keeping tabs on how my attempts to connect are working, I am turning to Kred.

I’ll discuss why, as an artist/designer, I even care about my social media influence in another post.

I make some really cool clothes for avatars in Second Life. Some of those designs I also have used for real world graphic tees. It would be lovely if I had the time, space, and funds to set up a screen printing shop at home, but I don’t. Fortunately, this isn’t necessary. I can still make and sell really awesome graphic tees and other items using a print-on-demand service.

I initially worried about this. Would using POD for my graphic tees make my brand, LoPo, look unprofessional? While I would love it if LoPo apparel and accessories had the same appeal major designer labels do, the reality is – LoPo isn’t a department store brand, it’s a small yet growing line of graphic designs by a solo artist on a shoestring budget working out of her 9′ x 10′ home office.

Print-on-demand companies give artists like me a free way to sell their designs without having to worry about the hassles and expense of purchasing supplies, equipment, etc. They handle all the printing, shipping, and credit card processing, leaving us the time to focus on making cool designs.

There are some drawbacks, of course. POD companies don’t offer the option of designing on sleeves or anywhere outside the standard rectangular areas on the front and back. This is a huge frustration for me, to be honest. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought of an amazing design for a shirt, but couldn’t bring it to market because of this limitation. Using POD also means having to co-brand LoPo with my supplier.

I have experience with three of the dozen or so main contenders in the POD field – CafePress, Zazzle, and Printfection. I didn’t stay with CafePress very long. They got a bit greedy for my tastes. Zazzle amazed me with their speed, customizable product selection, and quality. Yet, I still worried about how co-branding would affect LoPo as a brand, so I recently tried Printfection, which allows shop owners to brand their stores, shipping labels, etc., however they wish without Printfection’s name being plastered in several locations.

I made the switch because I loved having the ability to set up a shop that fully integrated with my website so that customers never felt like they left my site. I loved the idea of my customers seeing LoPo on the shipping label and other correspondence instead of my supplier’s. So, after much frustration and time wasted, I finally got my Printfection store set up, and ordered a sample to ensure their print quality was up to my standards. Within 48 hours, they had printed and shipped my tee and the print quality was excellent. Printfection’s packaging is great, too – I received my tee in a box instead of the typical plastic bag.  So, you’d think given the great quality, better packaging, and no need for co-branding, I’d stay with Printfection – but I’m not.

The reason? Their website and method of product management is truly awful. For customers, product images are too small and they can’t view the design in question on a variety of shirt colors. For shop owners, the archaic folder tree system Printfection is using for product creation and inventory management is horrifically tedious, unnecessarily time-consuming, and makes the stores themselves look clunky and redundant. This is not exactly the professional image I had in mind. So, I decided to stick with Zazzle for selling my graphic tee designs.

I gained a baby nephew today! While I’m happy to be an aunt again, rather than rushing to see him, I’m trying to finish up a few projects here first. Does that make me an uncaring bitch?

I am a busy bee. In Second Life, I’m working on more fashion for my main store and creating some new designs for my bridge line to place in my new channel store in the Portland sim. I’m also breeding and selling the ever precious meeroos – and am working in partnership with a friend on a side business revolving around useful items for other meeroo breeders and owners. In the real world, I’m putting together several new graphic tee designs for my online store, as well as working on more art for my next upcoming self-produced solo show “Raw”. I’ll be calling the current in-progress piece on my PC easel,  ”Lily”, and despite my love of all things Harry Potter, this title refers to the flower, not Harry’s mother. I’m also preparing to take on an art piece per day quest, which I will likely post to my pointless and stagnant Tumblr blog – giving it purpose once and for all.

I’m working on a rebuild of my main store, which, is a completely different art form. It’s a combination of architectural and interior design. Mind you, I’m not an architect or an interior designer, but it’s a lot of fun to play with various concepts, and building exercises my memory for natural details and poses an artistic challenge for how to best make those details come across in world. Best of all, in spite of the challenge, it’s a lot of fun!