Okay, so I know we've talked about making Teach Hack-a-Day swag multiple times. Each time required the need of third-parties to actually produce the swag and each time our plans have fallen through. Thus, I say we tell all those jack-asses to respectfully piss off and do this ourselves. My idea for one such design goes something like this.

I was reading the Make blog this weekend when I saw them making shirts using a bleach-relief method. The method involves making a mask of your design, placing it on the shirt, and using a spray bottle to actually spray bleach on the shirt. The result is your design in the original color with the surrounding areas bleached to a much lighter color. this is something that I'd like to try, but I do not have the skills/equipment to actually build the mask necessary.

What I'm looking for is a version of the skull 'n' wrench logo up at the top cut out of either wood or very thin sheet metal so that they can be reused to make multiple shirts. Ideally the design would be roughly 8 inches square to take up the front or back of a standard t-shirt. Also, it would be nice to have both the mask as well as the pieces that were cut out to make inverse designs as needed.

So can anyone help me out in this endeavor? Any of you CNC guys up for the task?

Sounds like a job for the laser cutters. There's a .dxf in the original CNC thread of the skull-and-cross-hacks logo.

I dig it.

I think the idea would be the bleach being the white part of the skull?
The question im wonder is if it would look cooler if the a squaure around the skull was sprayed down too?
or just to leave the skull floating.
Also, I think you would be using an insert inside the shirt to prevent blotting through? I didnt read the whole article.
What about somebody getting the printable iron on transfers. I think that might be fun and might be something i would try.
From what I remember, making and printing the transfer is easy and doesnt really require special software.

Yeah, I'd try that too but my hand cutting skills are not kung-fu tastic.

Excuse the very poor representations, but what I'm thinking is something alog the lines of this following with a black t-shirt:

Using the pieces that were cut out of the substance:
[IMG:464:422]http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/2299/test1vo4.png[/img]

Using the image cut out of the substance:
[IMG:371:338]http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/6567/test2ri0.png[/img]

only problem is that the everything is free floating and has no anchor point.
It would have to look more stencil like unless you plan to use the top image to set everything in place, and then remove it leaving the bottom piece and then spray, that would work.

Another thought is a stencil and spraypaint. I'm going to attempt a method that would be printable, yet stiff. More on that later today.

This is what I am going to attempt to spray to a shirt later today.
(sorry stencil gone)

What the attempt will be is to print out on regular paper, starch the paper and iron to see how well it stiffens, cut out the x spots and paint it.

Amazon has cheap shirts, and if you can sign up for a three month trail of amazon prime, it'll make it even cheaper.
What about print-out iron-ons?

iron on transfers are costly, a ten pack runs you 12-15 dollars, and just isnt as geeky.

here's how my dry run went, click it yo
(sorry stencil gone)


It's really just a test run, I would actually use a black shirt, white paint, and more paper to prevent overdraft.

Well is looks cool, I kind of like the overdraft.
One problem would be the paint coming off in the wash and messing other stuff up.

idk, does spray paint come off?

T-Shirt printing with stencils
Making a stencil

How about the words?
Anyway it would be nice if we had someone working for a t shirt printing department here...

Btw where are the shirts eliot had at defcon?

If someone wants to upload to me an Adobe Illustrator file of the logo, or knows where I can get a large high-res version of it, i can have them printed through my Spreadshirt shop. The prices can go as low as $10-12 a shirt. If it's in the .ai type of file, the logo can be any color you like, or glow in the dark, or metallic, or sparkly blue for the ladies. It can be put on messenger bags, cinch sacks, shirts, hats, mousepads, and buttons. I know it's through a third party, but Spreadshop is faster and better than CafePress, at least.

i just took another shirt over the design and ran an iron over it in attempt to color safe it. Otherwise its looking good for paint.
today I will print the stencil out on a transparency.

Sweet, how about those special gloosy printing papers that double up as iron ons?

Btw bigfuz ur avatar is too large.

i just changed it. looking for a better one