If you are not familiar with Cafe Press it is a company which has been around for at least 5 years with a neat concept which is to enable people to create designs for items such as tee shirts (or is it t-shirts?), sweatshirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, cards, posters, mouse pads and all kinds of everyday "stuff". Items can then be ordered but on a kind of 'print-on-demand' basis with no minimum quantities.
Quite often designs are uploaded and items ordered as a one-off, perhaps for a family event or some kind of group event, either social or work-based. However, for some this has become a significant business with hundreds, if not thousands, of designs and very pro-active marketing and sales.
Quite some time ago I had seriously thought of doing something and got as far as asking my webmaster to open an account so that he could refer me and get commissions on first-year sales. However, he didn't get around to it and I got side-tracked onto other things and it didn't happen.
When I did finally bite the bullet, just under 2 months ago, I regetted not having done it sooner. It really wasn't too difficult to get started with some designs and, having created them I have a sense that the products will probably look quite good. From what I gather Cafe Press use t-shirts, sweatshirts and other garments made from good quality cottons which are said to stand up to being washed multiple times.
The great thing about using stained glass designs for these is that they are usually striking and well-drawn with clear, boldly-coloured images which stand out against a plain white background. Black would be preferable but there are seemingly problems doing these kinds of transfer prints onto black cotton. It is something which CafePress are working on but have yet to be resolved.
So, here are a few images of items which can be found in our CafePress store.
The first item is one of our St Francis of Assisi designs some of which also incorporate the Prayer of Saint Francis
The next is one of our "Quotations" series which incorporate stained glass designs featuring quotations such as "Nature is the Art of God", "Architecture is like frozen music" and other quotations about education, literature and life.
I will not detail every design but there is Noah who is styled here as the world's first conservationist, the Good Samaritan including the scripture reference from the Gospel of St Luke and Jesus as a carpenter with the slogan "My boss is a Jewish Carpenter". These designs are available on various kinds of t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, cards, posters, prints and if there is something anyone would like which is not in the system we can create it provided that it is an item that Cafe Press can supply.
To see and buy visit our CafePress store
