mforsman

Glad I could help!

For jobs that you need little icons: http://www.thenounproject.com/

While that would be really nice, their prices are already so low in comparison to other shops that I tend to doubt that there will be anything.

Hahaha great post. Goodluck with the wife!

Something like a House Industries Brush style font might work as well.

take the subway every day!

I've always found that quality cards bring in quality business. Think about springing for letterpress, foil stamping, thicker material, custom die, something like that. You're whole business is about custom signs/vinyl? Why not use decals as your card. Buy a stamp with your contact info and stamp the app tape on a decal, then hand those out. It shows the product and sells your business.

It would be a lot of gradient overlays and outer glows.

Welcome! Lots of practice and experimenting will get you beyond what this forum can tell you. Not that this place isn't an amazing resource, but individual investigation is the most rewarding

Over the past 4 months i've been calling vinyl shops and getting quotes. One shop quoted me 4 different prices for 12x12", the exact same design and the difference wasn't minimal, after the second time I made sure that they were quoting the same material as well. My goal isn't to leave profit behind, my goal is to have consistant pricing for consumers. I bought a cutter because I was tired of being ripped off by the local shops. I want to make a square wage from any order, and that is what I'm going to do.

When you're ready for a more diverse selection of vector images I love using this package: https://www.ultimatesymbol.com/

I use Adobe Illustrator. It's not a cheap program, but it's tools are unbelievable and you can do just about anything. It's powerful, and I highly recommend it.

Everyone has told me what not to charge because its too low but no one will say what they would charge? At what point does the customer matter more than the profit that everyone wants more of. There's a hefty profit in the prices that I've quoted, and just because I can make more doesn't mean that I should be.

Here are a few videos of me printing flatstock (paper). In this video you can see the overall stroke/flood pattern. I pull a print, then lift the screen and flood back. Remove the media and begin again. In this second one you can clearly see after pulling a print and lifting the screen, how the ink fills the open mesh. It also shows the "off-contact" which is a few pieces of cardboard taped to the front of the screen. When you put your screen down, you do not want the mesh to touch the paper (or shirt) until you pull the squeegee. If it does, you will get a blurred print. I hope this helps. Youtube is your friend when it comes to learning how to screen print. Seeing the way different people work can teach you a lot of tricks.

the vinyl comes on a roll that has two layers. The top layer is the actual sticker material, the second layer is like the backing you'd pull off of a regular sticker. when you cut the vinyl, it draws all of the lines with a blade, its then your job to go in with tweezers/xacto blade and pull out the parts that you dont want. There is just enough adhesion on the top (vinyl sticker) layer that the design you want stays stuck to the vinyl. the goal is NOT to cut through both layers, but only the top. Once you've removed all of the parts you dont want "weeding", you apply application tape. This is like a masking tape that goes over the whole thing. It sticks to the top layer of the vinyl enough that the sticker backing falls away and the decal sticks to the application tape. Youtube "how to apply a vinyl decal" and you'll understand better.