Feline Friday : comparing my Pinkie t-shirts

Feline Friday : comparing my Pinkie t-shirts

As some of you already know, I’ve started a design-a-day challenge on Cactus Dreams in the hopes of getting to the point that I can sell designs for a living.  Zazzle takes your designs on whichever product you’ve put it on and then puts it out to sell internationally.

The thing is since they are not a local printer using one printer so I can easily learn to adjust for their printing, it’s been a tad tricky.  I usually buy one product to see how it looks.

I love Feline Fridays (you can change the text!) T-Shirt
This is how the design appeared after I uploaded it.  I used “I love Feline Fridays” in the text as I wanted a longer sentence figuring people might want to type in “I love calicos” or whatever.USA store

Canada Australia England New Zealand Japan Germany Spain France Sweden Netherlands Brazil

This is the design I uploaded.  Note how similar my design is and the picture that Zazzle shows.  And the slight shift in color on the t-shirt I actually received.

I had done Pinkie before. On the first shirt, it had printed more orangey than I expected so Pinkie’s back ear faded into the background.  I burned in her back ear to make it darker, blurred the background some more. I had meant to add some blue to get it back to neutral but I didn’t.

First t-shirt on left ; second one I did with personalizable text on the right

The first time I did my t-shirt I did the total design in Photoshop including the textt.  By the time I redid the design, I learned to use Zazzle’s upload app to make the text personalizable so people can change it to whatever they want like “I love Feline Fridays” or “I love my mom” or “Cactus Catz.  However, I have to use Zazzle’s fonts and can’t elongate fonts the way I can in Photoshop.

As you can see, the design printed lighter than what I uploaded and more orangey.  Looking at it now, I’d say that light orange from my yellow background is probably from a little more magenta — so next time add a little green.  Magenta and greens are opposites so you add more of the other to balance them. This time, though, the background came back a pale orangey camel — felt feminine, restful and light so I liked it.

My personal design-a-day challenge has hit a curveball as I’m discovering I need to include redesigns as a day due to the time they take which I hadn’t planned to originally.  I wanted to do one new design a day.

The first shirt is a polyesters/viscose blend and the 2nd one is 100% cotton.  I am curious to see if one holds the dye better than the other through repeated washings.  I’d bet the cotton will since it’s a natural fiber but we’ll see.

Now that I’ve learned to make the text personalizable for customers, the next thing to learn is to make a design so that they can swap out the picture.  That way instead of Pinkie, they can put in their own cat.

Oh, and just for fun a morphing cup I did.

The cup, except for the handle, goes to a white background as the cup heats up.  It’s fun.  and yeah, of course, mine reveals a cat, lol.

So that’s it for my Feline Friday.

——

Comedy Plus hosts Feline Friday. Join everyone on the hop! It’s fun.

 

20 Replies to “Feline Friday : comparing my Pinkie t-shirts”

    1. Thank you. Glad you liked the way they look. Granny would love you on a shirt. I didn’t know they had a Granny Day. That’s pretty cool. Holidays are great. When is it? Pinkie says everyday is a holiday for her.

      Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a great weekend!

      1. We have a National Granny’s and Grandpaw’s Day on the 4th of June, but I celebrate it on Mother’s Day, as Granny feels like a mother to me 🙂 Double Pawkiss for you 🙂 <3

        1. That’s cool I didn’t know about Granny/Granpa days Wow, June 4th! That’s just around the corner. And then it’s Papa’s day. But I ask you, when is Cat day? oh, I know — it’s everyday! Hope you’re having a great day …. and don’t get too potted! giggles. (for those who missed it, check out Angel’s pot story)

    1. My answer got really long, Crystal, so I decided to make a post of it. There are several image formats you can use. I list them all in the post. I also put my video tutorial on how to upload at the bottom of the post to make it easier for you.
      http://cactusdreams.com/zazzle/information-about-dpi-ppi-image-formats-and-zazzle/

      Whether your image is good enough depends on the size of the image, the size of the thing you want to put it on and what kind of image it is. 72dpi versus 300 dpi because a lot of phone cameras and web pictures are 72dpi but printing is done at 300dpi so most images need to be 4x bigger for printing to be the same size as what you see on your computer. I go into that in the post I made for you too.

      the post is a little long but I hope it helps you.

  1. thanks so much for commenting on my blog! (you didn’t mention if you were entering the contest), but regardless it is so nice to meet you! I just signed up to follow your blog (it is under my main email which is cgittleman at mi dot rr dot com) and that is the one that is attached to my dog’s blog (Dakota’s Den), this email is for my cat blog (but I don’t use it to receive mail)…yes, I know it’s confusing! lol. Nice to meet you!

  2. How fun. I need to check out your work more closely. I would love to do a shirt for our precious Little Bit that left us in October of 2015. We miss her so.

    Have a fabulous day and weekend. ♥

    1. I can do one for you if you want me to if you have a picture that’s big enough. Let me check out Amazon first though — they might have better pricing than Zazzle. I’ll work out over the weekend what their system is.

  3. Thank you for your wonderful comment on my post which seems to have been accidentally swallowed by the ghosts of WordPress – I’m so sorry, I must have hit the wrong key – would you please re-send that link? I was fascinated, jwas just reading when it disappeared! – I remember Obon festivals in Okinawa well, the dragon parades and the visiting of the shrines and graves and the leaving of things the dead might need -such as my favorite, the paper money. Again, please repost! Thanks in advance! 🙂

    1. I couldn’t remember everything I wrote but since you know about Obon I didn’t repeat that. Since the link went though the last time, I added the rest of them. Hope you enjoy them.

    2. Oh and I might add this. My Okinawan mom told me that you offer food to the spirits — the family gathers around the family altar at home giving food, drink and paper money to the ancestors and more recently passed. Often afterwards the family ate the food and drank that had been offered. But mom had a psychic cousin who wouldn’t touch them afterwards because he saw ghostly hands reaching for the food and drink during the ceremony.

      1. That is fascinating, and I remember seeing those things – the psychic cousin’s input is interesting!! Thank you so much for sharing !!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: