Money making scheme... I mean idea.

I'm so excited right now!

Well as I wrote before, I started attending the International House of Prayer University. When I started trying to figure out how to bank roll this whole operation, I spoke with my friend Robert about a couple of ideas, and he really encouraged me to try designing, printing, and selling my own t-shirts. I've wanted to learn how to screen print for a long time so this was a great time to give it a go. Well, that just happened. Over the Christmas break while I was home before school started, I was doing the research and preparing to get started on this. At the same time Micheal's Crafts Store came out with an outstanding coupon! Any one item 40% off. I was looking at about $100 worth of stuff that I would need to make the screens and ink, not even including the shirts, so we gathered several more of the coupons from neighbors, and I bought my materials one at a time. Sometimes I would go to multiple stores in the same day, or bring my mom with me so she could use one coupon too. It took longer, but I saved a good deal of money, 58 bucks  (!!! Do you even know how much Chipotle that could buy me? ), because the first week, each receipt also came with a 50% off any one item for the next week. Awesome! God provides in so many ways, He's really good at it!

All that to say; last night I printed them all up. It went a lot faster then I expected, but it was also a lot harder then I expected too. (I dunno if I've ever come across that combination before.)

Thursday afternoon, I came home to a surprise! I was so excited to get started!












So I gathered up all my supplies and I was ready to go! Note: the 2 liter because I was expecting this whole process to take a lot more time then it actually did. I got the actual printing done in under three hours, but the ironing to set the ink permanent today took several more than that. The after math of destruction and paper towels was pretty amazing too, but I'll spare you that image and let your imagination runamuck with it.

Each one is a little different since I did a method called a "split fountain" where I placed both the white and the blue ink together to create the transition of color. The fact that I'm a total newbie helped in that area too. It's a little unpredictable, and I like that. Each one has more of a "hand made" feel then most the the machine produced in mass quantity things that are all around us now. I'm not hating on machine production, but I really enjoy the uniqueness that comes when things are created individually by hand. The little quirks and differences are so neat to see when all together. Trying to trouble shoot on the fly kept me on my toes too: Is the ink drying too fast on my screen? How can I get ride of water that's dripped on the screen and smearing the ink? Do I have enough ink to do another run? Dear God, I need your help! I distinctly remembering praying "Jesus, you're the best screen printer in the world. You know all about it, please help."

There were several that got messed up along the way, but I had ordered a couple extras of each size to take that into account. I still managed to have enough successes to fill the orders I've gotten for each size, and a I have a few mediums left over too in case anyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon. It was so cool seeing them laid out on literally almost every horizontal surface in me room. It reminded me again how much I enjoy making things, and looking at the end product afterwards.










I wonder if that even a fraction of what God feels when He looks at the Earth and all of us. He's definitely got an edge on me. I mean, He's been doing it a lot longer, has made a lot more stuff, and everything comes out just like He wanted it to. But if I can get so excited over several t-shirts, surely He gets much more excited over me. Life is so much more fun, and enjoyable when the fact that God enjoys me starts to become a reality to me. I love being an artist, in relationship with the most creative person ever!

pb