kauffman21

I guess I'm going to have to go get some of that. I have been trying the 220 grit white AO that they sell, but it seems like it doesn't etch into the glass deep enough for my liking.

is that a font or is it custom?

I usually do basic one colors for $12-15 so it looks like were all mostly together on this one.

So just as in this topic, I had some greenstar from a bundle I bought awhile back. I recently ran into a customer of mine who wanted to replace a large decal on their back glass of their car. I remember that I did that decal with the greenstar specifically. So when I went to check it out, it was all cracked and looked like garbage. I installed that decal roughly 2 years and 2 months ago. I never said anything to the customer about it because they never brought it up, but after I got them their new decal and installed it for them I came back in to check on the greenstar life expectancy. It says "5 years when properly applied....warranty coverage is defined as no appreciable deterioration in the product. Cracking, crazing, blistering or loss of adhesion constitutes a breach of warranty if it occurs during the stated life of the product." So I guess my question is.... if I had a customer come to me demanding to replace the decal or whatever I sold them because it was all cracked up because the greenstar didn't last as long as it says it will, how do I go about getting them (greenstar or uscutter) to do good by me? I mean, of course I would replace a decal for one of my customers and I have since switched to only use Oracle 651 or better, but I did go through a good 8-10 rolls of different colors of the greenstar that came with the bundle that I purchased. I haven't had any negative experiences so far (knock on wood) that a customer has brought up to me, but I am just thinking of how to deal with it on my end if something did come up? I'm not asking what to do with the customer, as I would replace it without a doubt.

watermark everything. I have learned that I have to watermark everything. But I have had people straight up steal my finished product pictures and pass them off as their own, so I trust no one. In the end, I would hope the other shop would see that it is your design and you watermarked it, but just like in any form of business, there are shady people out there that will just recreate it or something. If it is original, you do own it or so that's what I believe to be true...I am far from a lawyer so don't take my word to court with you. I hate people to waste my time, but also sometimes you have to do that in order to get their business. At least that's what I have experienced.

Good advice so far... also you may want to pick a theme and stick to it. having several different types of fonts/colors and several different styles of logos on your page may make it seem too cluttered. You have a good start with the layout, just change the small things and it looks like you would do well

Welcome to the forum. I would recommend just reading through some of the "Instructional Contributions" section. I learned a lot in very short time just by reading that section of the forums. Saves you time, money, and headache if you do. There are some very informative and friendly people here that will help you.

My local Harbor Freight has big tubs of 70grit AO (20lbs i think?) black in color, and small jars of 220grit AO (2lbs) white in color. That's where I get mine. I have also heard that tractor supply has it but I haven't been in the stores to check first hand. I didn't see any on the website either, but I was told they do in store.

True story. I have a ton of fonts well over 30,000 that I can remember, possibly many more. Every three or four days I find myself collecting more fonts just because I like the way they look and think I might be able to use it somewhere... if I were to load those all in a program such as photoshop or illustrator, it would take roughly 30min just to open the program. I'm sure there are packs to buy on ebay or on the net somewhere, but I have just collected mine over time from being a habitual font lover, and when a customer wants a specific one I'll get it and save it. But you should by no means load all of your fonts into any program such as a design program or something. I go through my font manager and see ones I like and I load them in my windows->font folder and if I see a fault in the font (I see that I really dont like it after all) I'll go in that folder and delete them. I would say try not to have more than 500 or so in that folder just because of load times alone. But then again, like I said...I'm a self diagnosed font addict so maybe 500 is too many for normal people to have in there LOL if you're looking for free fonts you can start with 1001fonts.com or dafont.com (i think those are the names, I have them saved on my browser so they may be spelled different than that) just google "free fonts" and tons of sites pop up. Also make sure you have permission to use them to make money, thats a whole other google search because of how they use certain words giving permission. You have to download them and unzip them and then you might want to start off like everyone is saying and be neat and categorize them all from the beginning...believe me if you don't really all you can do is search your hard drive for the specific name and hope that it's labeled correctly. Sorry for such a long rambling post, I hope you can make sense of it haha

what size grit are you using? I like how that looks

2 layered vinyl on my personal A to B car. I really like how it turned out, hoping to catch some eyes. Sorry if the pics are too big or anything, I don't upload on here enough to figure it out.

So I was thinking of hiring an outside sales person to go to businesses among other places to drum up business. he/she would keep a percentage of the amount they sold (10-15%) has anyone here done this before? Things are real slow here in between sports seasons and I'm hoping this will get more work in and give the sales person a reason to sell more if they got a percentage of the final bill. Anyone have any Input please?

So I went into one of our favorite Jerky stores today to try out this new jerky we heard another fiend talk about. Long story short, the owner noticed I was the guy who installed letters on the windows of the barber shop next door and wanted to strike me a deal. He had a roll of lettering that was sent to him from the place he franchises all of his stuff from, and he wanted me to put it in his freezer because he screwed it up before. So all I had to do was line it up, tape it off, peel and stick... and he gave me $60.00 worth of jerky. Not your run of the mill gas station jerky either... some real good stuff. I was happy, he was happy, so when I got home and told the wife she said "oh, so we get paid in jerky now?" I said "hell yeah... cash, card, money order, or jerky!" haha. Not too bad for what I was going to spend in the store anyways, to get it free for installing sone letters on the front of a freezer, I feel like I made out like a bandit!

Ok then, the website I use most often is www.whatfontis.com you upload the pic of the font then hopefully it will recognize the letters and you type in what the letters are. example being the picture says "Basketball" in a font you need to find, you upload it then it will attempt to recognize each letter then it will ask you what each letter is and you type in what the letter is and if its a capital letter or lower case etc. then it will show a list of fonts that closely match the pic. It's kinda hard to explain, but easy to do once you go there and try it out. I have found 99% of the fonts I was searching for using that site. If you need help figuring it out, shoot me a message and I'll try to help you.

I see posts on here a lot asking what certain fonts are... there are websites out there that you can submit a picture with the font on it and the website program generates a list of fonts based off of what it thinks is the closest. I'm not sure if the rules on this forum would allow me to post a website link here for other sites, but you can just google "what font is this" and some of the sites will pop up. I use these places a lot, its free, and a lot of times it saves time instead of waiting for someone to respond here. I am in no way shape or form trying to say don't ask for help in here, I'm just trying to help you save some time and find the correct answer. I hope this helps you out in the future.

Yeah it seems you're right. Oh well. I love it.

Black pepper, honey BBQ, and one called "cowboy". Great stuff.

welcome from the KY/TN border

welcome. hope you learn a thing or two, i know i did

Before you ask: Oracle 651 red and white applied dry and I believe either I was slightly off or the person who did my tint was off, because They didn't line up exactly if you can tell. I still like it though, all my neighbors like it and I've noticed some people looking to read it as they drive by... thats all that matters to me. Even if all they can read is the name, later down the road my name will be in the back of their heads when they hear it again, they will think "I've heard of that place". But then again, I tend to over think situations or so my doc says LOL.

that is nice, I like the colors of the room.

looks good

Ok, thanks for the advice. so are you thinking like 20-30% of final price? what do you think is a fair price or percentage?

Yeah I agree. I just threw the numbers out there to give people an idea of what I was talking about. I do all of our installing, designing, and shirt pressing while my wife does 100% of the weeding and phone answering which leaves us with little to no time to go out and generate new sales... most of our work is by word of mouth. We're nowhere near able to go full time with a store front (currently we use our garage as the shop), and if it wasn't for my VA and Army retirement checks we'd have a hard time doing what we do now. But I was thinking of doing this since we do have a friend who is basically a salesman of ours and all he wants is a few shirts and decals in return. He's a good guy who is a real people person, and I've tried paying him, he don't want it...he wants more shirts lol. Hard to argue with that. Hopefully someone on here reads this that has experience hiring a full-time or even part-time sales person (we live near a few colleges and a huge military base that we could recruit employees from), it seems like a great idea, but I'd like some advice from someone before I dive in and learn from trial and error on this. I'm not the type of person who would just go door to door and sale things, but I am the type that would pay someone to do it for me LOL

I have an air eraser and a cabinet, I bought the cabinet because I was tired of stopping to refill the air eraser every few moments. I still havent worked out the settings on my cabinet yet, hopefully I will soon enough. Your wine bottles look real good, I like how smooth and even the etch looks. I'm assuming you use the 220 aluminum oxide? Thats what I am using, I just cant find a good psi to work at. Any suggestions?