Making Custom T-shirts - help!

[maryinaz]

We have to make t-shirts for my son's student body president campaign next week. He'll give them out to people to wear as support for him. This is not his first election, but it's pretty critical because his ex-girlfriend decided to run against him. Oh, the drama!

Anyway, I'm looking for ideas on how to do it the cheapest, easiest, fastest, and coolest way. I've looked into a screen-printing kit at Hobby Lobby, and we've done iron-on transfers before. I had also thought of using some kind of stencil and fabric spray paint. We might have to make up to 50 of them, so it has to be easy (and cheap). We'll probably do white to keep the cost down and then we can do whatever colors on them.

Anyone have any other ideas, or experience with the screen printing?

Oh, and we have a big supply of Hawaiian leis that I thought he could give out, but I'm not sure how to work that into a "Vote for Wyatt" type of thing, so any ideas on that? Like a message on it somehow?

Everyone here is so creative so I'm hoping for some good ideas! :)

[sczos911]

my only idea for the shirts is to call around to t shirt companies & see if they'll donate the shirts if you put the company's logo on them. Tell them you'll provide the artwork (an EPS done in illustrator if you have it works awesomely) and will take any color of shirts. They may have extras they want to be rid of. You never know.

Otherwise for your sanity - I'd do a spray paint stencil. Get the Xacto knife out, the poster board for the stencil. For the shirts - I'd go to Michaels with a coupon for colored shirts (or alot - I'd send you ours if there is coupons in this Sunday's paper!) or tie dying white hanes shirts (to give them some pizaaz) would work too and be cheaper (I would think!)

For the leis, make a tag of sorts that says Vote for Wyatt. You could do that out of carstock & then print them off. 2 sided, punch a big hole and slip the lei through making a loop on the tag. Or some sort of string so the tag is hanging off the lei.

[eranslow]

vote for wyatt - he won't "lei" down on the job!

how about a big stencil & spray paint? my synchro team did that and they looked really cool/fun.

[maryinaz]

Thanks for the ideas!

Oh, I didn't think of trying to get the t-shirts free - I'll have to think on that. Otherwise, sounds like a stencil is the way to go. I can dig out my bazillion alpha templates from my paper scrapping days, if I have to. I found a place to get shirts for $1.81 and next day delivery with free shipping - I don't think I can find them cheaper than that.

I also like that slogan and tag idea for the leis. We have about 85 leis - maybe he could give those out on the day of the election or something. I'm sure he'll have to give out candy during the week too. There about 2000 potential voters (senior class doesn't vote since it's for next year), so hopefully the shirts/leis can at least be seen by a good percentage of them.

So stressful! Wyatt has been class president every year so he has worked really hard for this and I would hate for him to lose to his ex-girlfriend. Eep!