Thread: This weekends T-shirts

Here's the two shirts I finished this weekend. The one from the show I finished today cause I thought I'd throw a little more on it.

The other is the 1967 Firebird T-shirt, My first actual paying job. It's painted front and back, cartoon style just as requested. It pretty much wraps all the way around the entire shirt.

I've got to be honest and tell you that this pretty much took me all day to paint and heat set. Mostly because this is way out of my genre of painting, i'm not to good with cars and this kind of cartoony stuff.

I'm not sure what any of you would charge for a shirt that is painted all the way around on both sides...... Anyone care to say what kind of prices that they would charge for a two sided shirt?

$35 just doesn't seem to be enough for a shirt that has so much area painted.

Here's the shirts, let me know what you think.

Greger

Love the shirts, especially the Pirate one.... haven't a clue on what to charge and you are right, $35 doesn't seem right for all the time and work but then again, will they pay more?

Cliff

Thanks Guys, Just trying to get a feel for selling. I really need to get a set of stencils together for those 10 minute T-shirts. My own desgins, and interest genre specific designs that can have their names or RIPs, memory ofs, names of person for gifting.

Then have the totally custom Big paint area shirts out, where they can see what the costs are for small, medium and large 10 minute stencil T-shirts are.

Thanks for your comments and thoughts

Greger

Very nice work greger! Gotta keep the shirts simple to make money on em........

Yep, I agree KD simple is best.

So I'm wondering, what does every body do when someone comes and says I want you to do a custom T-shirt that fills both sides up with art? Something like a pet portrait, Human Portrait, Car or Home Portrait something that is big, say 16" x 24"

Does everyone just say nope, I don't do that. I only do T-shirts from a book of templates with simple designs, no larger than 12" x 12", that take 10 to 15 minutes per design. And that will cost $35. If you bring your own shirt, I'll take off $5 ?

This is still quite interesting to me, and I'm still wondering what other people here are doing. Cause I keep seeing full shirt front designs being posted, and designs that must take a lot of time to do.....

The only way I could spend 6 - 8+ hours on a shirt, a tank, car hood, fender, leather Jacket or illustration and sell it for $35 is to be independantly wealthy, and not need anything from an income to support meself! LOL

Greger

Hey now Gregor. First things first. Nice job on the shirts. As for the pricing thing, dont get to crazy with what others charge. I would think at this point having you first paying job is a great reward initself! The cash is xtra. Of course this theory sucks after the first job but you get what I mean. I know you have a "regular" gig or job. What is your hourly there? If someone wants you to do a shirt that will take 3 hours to do and you pull 20 in your reg deal, is 60 for 3 hours OK? FOR YOU??????? Sure most established shirt folks run about 60 an hour on the minimum but they are doing 4 shirts an hour and are super quick. I dont think its fair to you to hold yourself to that standard. Yet, that is! The fact that you are now gettin paying jobs is step one and once you develop your own designs and stencils, speed and reputation, you can set your own rate. Bottom line (in my opinion) dont do the work for free, but keep in mind that you are developing your business with each job, getting better and faster with each one, each happy customer you put on the streets is another walking advertisement for you. $35 for 6 hours? That dude got a deal man! But the next time you get a request for a similiar job, you will have this one as a base for time. Do you have to draw an image? One side of the shirt? Lettering? Custom design? have a number in mind for your time and build from there.
And once again, good job on the shirts.
TABG

www.theairbrushguys.com

Shirts look great! Have no idea on pricing.. So how did you end up duplicating the design? Stencil, tracing?.................

Great job on the shirts i like them. I only do for hobby so can"t help on pricing.. Shirts tough way to go to make money. You Must be good and Fast I am neither... I am Not Bad and Slow. Wrong combination to make money

Thanks Sabre, that's a fun one to watch. The exact kind of shirt I mentioned taking about 5 minutes or so, and costing $20 - $25, then working up from there.......? Working up? Well, maybe so, maybe no. LOL

BoneScraper, I traced over the shirt he gave me, then set it to a good piece of paper with pen so I could see it through the material, then made the rough sketch onto the T-shirt. I also searched for firebirds on line and down loaded some pics so I could add details.

mrqqqq, I hear ya and know what you mean.

Thanks TABG, more good information from U! I know it takes time, and I wish I could meet my obligations for $20 an hour. LOL I'd be a much more relaxed person than I am. All things in time. I'm just trying to figure out a realistic and reasonable average on pricing not low balling or Rolls Royce pricing. Just some kind of average.

Thanks for all of your replies and encouragement.

Greger

Greger it become increasingly hard to make money on the t-shirt end of Airbrushing. For working out of your home and the style of painting you did $35 is a pretty good price. The shirts I did a while back of the custom cars with a lot more detail I was payed only $35 a piece. Working with multiple airbrushes will increase your speed and make it more cost efficient to do these designs. Back when I airbrushed in Florida for a season we did beach designs with a name on them and made $12 to $14 a shirt and then the sportswear shop added their price for the shirt. Custom jobs we did in our spare time and were usually around $35 to $65 depending.

The hardest thing about making money out of your house is the people are not in a vacation area looking for souvenir items with money to blow. This makes it increasingly difficult to make the sale. I have had several customers call with Senior t-shirts they wanted done for their kids in high school. In-fact I was expecting a customer this past Tuesday and she was a no show even when she agreed on a price of $28. The shirt was front and back with Senior 2010 on the front and a slogan plus school logo on the back. I felt this was an acceptable price for that amount of work and she was providing the shirt. At the end of the conversation we set up the date and she no showed. Another job bites the dust. This has become the increasing discouragement for me to even pursuing airbrush sales and makes me want to just paint for myself. After all I can not deny the artist within myself. It is not like when I started back in 1980s when airbrushed t-shirts were the rage. Even the amount of people wanting Automotive Murals has decreased significantly over the past 20 years. Most of the airbrush artist that were in my area have put down their airbrushes and turned to other interests and moved away. Even the festivals that come to my area I have noticed there are no airbrush artist working them anymore. Once in a while I do see temp tattoo artists, but that is even become a novelty. I guess I am stuck in the past dreaming an old dream of days gone by. If you can make it work then more power to you.

I guess what I am saying is whatever you end up making is better than nothing and you have accomplished a part of your dream to make a sale at airbrush art. If you are stubborn like me you wont give up and keep hopping for the future.

Fred

Well Greger I dont have to say anything about priceing and the like as it has all been covered so all I.ll say is cool shirts.

like neder i cant comment on pricing, but i like the shirts, specially the pirate one, well done, riki.