Key Designs

Ryonet’s  cyber monday sell was amazing!!!! Most sales are on items that you don’t care about, but not ryonet’s. There was a lot of awesome stuff for sale. 

Here is what I ordered:

The Business of screen printing dvd  50% off…. I can’t wait to get this!

2 packs of waterproof film  50% off second pack….. Stocking up!

Pre Registration template  50% off!!! Been needing one of these, couldn’t pass price up

There was a lot more amazing items on sale I wish I could have bought. However I am trying to watch my money right now. Wasn’t planning on buying anything, but at those prices I couldn’t afford not to!!! 

Thanks so much Ryonet!!!!!!

Oh and also Ryonet is giving away a copy of Separation studio …. here is the page to enter.

( I should prob keep this a secret though so ill have a better chance of winning, lol)

Well it is the last day of november, which means it it the last day to post my creative idea for the november pick me blogging contest. Talk about waiting till the last minute (I really gotta stop doing that.) I have been trying really hard to come up with the perfect idea so I can win the sublimation gear as it would help me out alot. After watching Ryonet’s holiday marketing dvd I had a few ideas but wasn’t really satisfied. To me the holiday season is about family, and giving to others. This is the main basis behind the idea I came up with.

First I would like to give a little background to explain the motivation behind my idea. Growing up I had three siblings and we lived in a trailer park with my grandparents. My grandparents were both retired and to old to work so we didn’t have a lot of money. Around the holidays it was hard for them to buy all four of us christmas gifts, so they always received help from local churches and charities to help provide me and my sisters presents. This meant a lot to us and it helped my family out a lot. Each year these charities do toy drives that in return help many families out. So for my creative marketing idea I would like to combine marketing your company with helping others out.

This idea will require you to spend a little money up front on supplies but will help get your name out. Also you will probably have to read all the steps in order to understand the idea, it might seem a little confusing as your reading through, but it will become clear ( i hope.)

Step 1: Come up with a product that you can give away for free to help promote your business and encourage people to donate. This could be a simple one color shirt saying something along the lines of “I helped a kid in need this holiday season,” or some other slogan you come up with. If you don’t want to do shirts you can do something different like custom wrapping paper or customized tree ornaments with your towns school mascot, get creative. You can use ideas and clipart from ryonet’s holiday marketing kit to help you out.

Step 2: Contact a local church or charity that does a toy drive, and let them know what you will be doing. Find out what requirements they have on their donations. Also find out a deadline for donations.  And who knows they might have ways they can help you out.

Step 3: Contact local businesses in your area to partner up with you that will allow you to set up drop boxes for donations (restaurants or department stores would probably be a good place.) If you plan on giving away shirts maybe print their logo along with yours on the shirts. You can decorate these drop boxes with your logo, the church/charities logo, and the logo of the business that are helping out.

Step 4: Provide the business with your promotional product to give away to everyone who comes in and donates. Also attach a business card or flyer to each of these products with your business name, website, and contact information. 

Step 5: Before the deadline for donations is up collect any leftover products, and the donations and bring them to the church/charity to give away.

I hope I did a good enough job explaining this so you understand my idea. I think this is a very good way to help others while also getting your name out. It also helps portray a good image for your business, and most importantly you will be helping others out that may really need it. This will make you feel great about yourself. 

Good luck to everyone who entered this months contest. And happy holidays to everyone. 

It has almost been 2 weeks since my last post, but im still here. Just have not had much to blog about. This past week I was off of school, and decided to just spend it relaxing and spending time with my family and friends… and trust me I needed it. I will be back in full force this week and promise to produce a few more blogs. I do have a few updates from the last week in a half though, but nothing big.

- My pressure washer was still in warranty so they are sending me a brand new one.

- I talked to one of my previous clients and she wants some more shirts made :)

- I have a job that I should be getting the details on sometime early this week. 4 color job for $25 a shirt :)

- Reading an amazing book called The Magic of Thinking Big. I have read about 1/2 of it so far and it has helped me alot. It is about being successful and positive. Ill post more about it when I am finished reading it.

- Also I finished the job I was working on last week when me pressure washer broke. Turned out great and she said they might be ordering more.

Thats it for now, but like I said ill be back posting more this week.

Today was def a monday. Stuff was going wrong one thing after another. First off I woke up way late. I couldn’t sleep much last night because I had a lot on my mind with this business start up, school, and my personal life. I didn’t get half the things done today that I wanted. When I woke up I went to the bank first to start a business bank account. We ran into some problems, but got them worked out. Then went to the court house and city hall to see if I needed any local permits for my business, luckily I didn’t. 

When I got home I had a box of shirts waiting on the porch for a job that needs to get done this week. Its a pretty simple 2 color job for a local school. Everything seemed all good until the told me they had to pay with a purchase order. Which means I make the shirts, deliver them, and then they have 30 days to pay me. This kinda stinks because with starting this business I need all the money I can get now. I guess since im going into business now I have to get used to this with schools and other businesses.

I wasn’t expecting these shirts to get here till later in the week, but since they arrived today I decided to go ahead and start on them and get them to the client ASAP. So I go to print the transparencies and forget to set the printer up for best quality so I waist one of my six transparencies I have on hand. After setting up the printer I print the 2 transparencies that are to be used on the front of the shirt. Went through the process of registering and burning them. When it came time to wash out the exposed screens I blew out the smaller details on accident on BOTH screens. I guess I didn’t expose them long enough.

So I had to clean the emulsion off and start over.Well while I was doing this my pressure washer breaks and starts leaking internally and the motor kept kicking on and off again. So I spent the next few hours trying to figure out why. Im no technician and have no clue how to fix it. Luckily it is still under warranty, so tomorrow im going to call and see if they will fix it. Im almost positive they will because when I was researching on the internet it seemed to be a common problem. Untill then I guess I will go back to using a standard garden hose :(  Which sucks since I have 3 jobs right now.

My darkroom/laundry room floor was covered in water and I had to clean that up. So now I have decided to quit for the day before I have a break down. I still have lots to do including my logo, website, and setting up quickbooks before I am officially up and running. The rest of this week im going to try and focus on school and getting this job done (first I have to order some more transparencies.) Also I know I forgot to post the blog last week on printing transparencies so I will try and get that up this week. 

ALRIGHT! As of yesterday I am officially a registered Oklahoma business. I am very excited, it is starting to feel real. It took me like 30 minutes of driving around OKC to find the building (and thats using a GPS!) I was a little nervous going into the Tax Commision since I had no idea what I was doing, but it wasn’t to bad. Took them about 45 minutes to get everything together and they explained a little to me and I was on my way.

I also received my order from Ryonet today. I have to say I was very pleased. I ordered a lot of chemicals that I was getting low on, this was the first time I have had to order them since I received my chemical starter kit with my semi pro. I was expecting the same size of chemicals I received in my starter kit, but they were actually much larger. I bought some CCER80 Emulsion Remover which mixes to make an entire gallon. I also ordered CCI Nutralyze Screen Degreaser QT, Liquid Renu-It, Plasi Solve, and some Hand Cleaner which came in a large container (I use alot so that helps.)  I also bought a few other little things to make cleaning up easier. I am most impressed with the Liquid Renu-it, it is an AMAZING product. I had screens that I had tried reclaiming multiple times with other products and the renu-it mad my screens look brand new! The trick is to make sure you leave it setting for at least a good 10 minutes before pressure washing it out. 

I also received my Holiday Marketing Kit today, I skimmed through it watching a few minutes and it looks like it’s going to be very helpful. I really gotta come up the perfect holiday marketing idea so I can win the sublimation gear. This would open up so many more business opportunities.  I have a few ideas in mind that also include helping others out at the same time which is what the holidays are really about…. giving. Once I decide on a final idea I will try and do a video explaining it. 

I have also began to play around with my quickbooks for screen printers. It is an amazing and very powerful accounting tool for business owners that I feel is going to help me out a lot! Ryonet has packed all sorts of tutorials and extra goodies to help out screen printers. I can’t wait to figure it all out and get to using it. 

I also registered a domain name and email for my business. jneeley@keydesignspv.com is my new business email. My website once it is finished will be keydesignspv.com. Designing a logo and setting up the website are next on my list of things to do.

Later on this week I plan on writing my second blog in the screen printing process. This one will be on printing your design to transfers. Im hoping to have it up on saturday. 

I would like to end this blog with a shout out to Ashley Rudolph of Ryonet, she has been a great help to me in getting started back up. 

Just a quick update. Today I filled out the new business application, and received my EIN number.. Tommorow I go and turn the papers in :)

So it’s sunday night, and the end of another busy week. The good news is it’s been a busy week of screen printing related events. Thursday morning I attended a tax business workshop. When I arrived I was very nervous, not knowing what to expect. I thought it would be a bunch of businessmen, and there I would be younger than everyone, however this was not the case. It turned out that I was the only one there! It was pretty cool because it was just me and these two speakers that were business experts. So I got one on one (well one on two actually) time to ask specific questions I had. They answered everything I needed to know, and went through the entire process of starting a business, how to set it up, and how to go about paying sales and income taxes. They were very helpful and now I feel much more content about the accounting side of things. They gave me a few books about starting a business and a few other things. Also they told me that having quickbooks would help alot! (Thanks Ryonet!) Tuesday I will be going to get my business license. YAY!

Thursday afternoon I received an order of tshirts from shirtspace.com for an order I have. So this weekend was spent printing shirts. It was just a small order of 40 shirts, but took me much longer than normal because I ran into some problems These shirts were 4 color on the front and two on the back. Mostly I am used to doing one or two color shirts one sided. I had a few problems getting everything lined up. This was 100% my fault because I didn’t print registration or center marks. I went through like 12 white test pellons getting everything lined up and messed up a few shirts along the way. I think my main problem was not setting up a good enough trap. The whole time I was printing the shirts I had the screen printing 101 DVD from ryonet in, watching it. I learned quite a bit off there that I never learned in my classes in high school. Alot of information that if I would have known would have saved me tons of money and time. So my suggestion would be watching this dvd even if you already know how to screen print, I wish I would have watched it sooner. Lesson learned I guess. After finally getting everything lined up the shirts turned out pretty well.

After finishing up these shirts I decided it was time to do some cleaning. So I did some hard cleaning on my equipment, screens, squeegees, ect… I also organized all my supplies and did some inventory and ordered some chemicals, ink (5 for $55), mores test pellons, and a few other things to hold me over for a while. Hopefully I will be getting some new clients once I start my website, and advertising a little.

Im very excited about getting back on track with my screen printing business. I bought a new epson wide format printer with two black cartridges that I am excited about. Once I have some regular jobs coming in I plan on updating my silver press to two stations to up my productivity. I have also been busy trying to come up with some ideas for the november blog contest in marketing. Hopefully once my holiday marketing DVD gets here I will be able to come up with an awesome idea to win the sublimation package, which would be SWEET! I have big things planned out for the next month, which hopefully will include a Ryonet screen printing class. 

Thats about it for now, I will do my best to keep this updated as much as possible. Thanks for reading, and thanks so much to Ryonet for making this possible.

Ok so it has been 2 months since my last blog post! WOW! That is absolutely horrible, I have not been very loyal to the contract I signed. To be perfectly honest though, I had totally forgot about it seeing as how I have not touched any of my screen printing equipment in this time. Life has been all kinds of crazy. But the good news is I am back and ready to go full force with this screen printing business. Let me take a minute to explain.

So back in September I was made manager at my job, at first this was exciting and I was happy about it. However that didn’t last long, I was working tons of extra hours, and had lots of extra responsibility that wasn’t really worth it. With all these hours, midterms at school, and everything else I had no time for anything. Well there was one day at work that finally just pushed me over the limit, and then I did it! What exactly did I do? I Put in my 2 weeks notice at work. My boss is a pretty good guy, and totally understood. The only thing he asked was to stay longer than two weeks so he could get things all figured out, I agreed and stayed for another month. And now here I am, I have thought this out and went over all my options and decided I didn’t want to try and get another job, I wanted to try and get this business started!

So now I have no choice but to get motivated and get things going. Thursday I am going to attend a new business workshop that explains business structure, taxes, etc… After that is over I will fill out all the business forms, and get going. 

I have a small 4 color job of about 40 shirts right now, just waiting for the shirts to arrive from shirtspace. I plan on doing some sort of blog relating to these shirts, not sure what about though. And the rest of this week I plan on trying to deign a logo, and start on a website. My goal is to be completely up and running by the end of November so wish me luck. I will try and keep everyone as updated as I can.  

I don’t exactly remember where I saw this at, but I thought it was funny. I hate when people ask me how much for shirts, without knowing any information about what they want.

I had to share this. It is a series of funny comic strips about freelance graphic design, but a lot of it also applies to screen printers.