Preshrunk

Much to the dismay of my Christian friends, I'm not too much of a Jesus guy. It's not that I'm not into his message or anything, it's just that religion was never my cup of tea. Besides, I've never much cared for folks who get uppity people for not believing in a dude. Even if the dude in question did have some groovy concepts, nobody needs that crammed down their throats.

Simple Letter's shirts aren't the heavy handed Born Again wear that seems to be the rage with the WalMart crowd; but that's what I like about them. Lion of Judah is a Jah tinged tribute that doesn't beat you in the face with it's spiritual roots. In fact, if you didn't know it was a Christian shirt I bet the Athiests/Agnostics/Buddhists/Muslims/etc. in the crowd wouldn't think twice about picking it up. Hell, I'm sorta considering it.

$17.99 | Credit | URL [via]

Snap, yo. It would seem that the folks at skinnyCorp recently soft launched OMG Clothing. Like Threadless, OMG Clothing takes user submissions and spins them into shirts. But instead of carefully crafting vector art, users throw a whole bunch of witty/stupid slogans at the wall to see what sticks.

The rating system they've implemented is actually a whole mess of fun. You're given 50 random slogans which you're asked to rate "I'd wear this" or "OMG... stupid". I've spent about 15 minutes playing with it before writing this entry, and I almost couldn't pull myself away from it. At first I felt really bad tagging shirts I wouldn't wear "OMG... stupid" but I eventually tired of the system urging me to rate them before I continued.

Now I'm not too hip on giving someone else exclusive rights to any of my really clever slogans. Especially not for something as small as a chance at a $200 prize package. But if you have no problem selling your soul, we suggest you get over there and submit something. I mean, we're going to need to have something to write about in six months.

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I'll probably catch a bunch of shit for this, but the instructions for this week's This Old T-Shirt are from YM. Yeah, the teen girl's magazine. Quit laughing. It's not like I read it or anything, honest. Seriously, shut up.

I would have reprinted them as they appeared in the magazine, but I decided to see how the instructions stacked up in the real world. After checking over some forums, I found plenty of people who messed up their tees by following the instructions to the letter. A lot of folks turned their shirts white after soaking them in regular bleach for two days. Others crowed over how using coarse grit sandpaper chewed screenprinting and iron-ons off. So by taking the best bits out of all the suggested modifications to the instructions, I feel that we've cooked up a more comprehensive How To.

The only problem is, we haven't had any time to test the instructions. Since I only added suggestions from forums that garnered positive results, you should be okay. We advise that you try these instructions on a shirt from the thrift store before you try to rough up the Ramones tee you just spent $20 on.

Standard Fade

1. Soak shirt in a solution of 8 cups of water and 1 1/2 cups of salt for 3 days. To make a solution, bring the water to a boil and stir in the salt. Let the solution cool before soaking your shirt, or your shirt may shrink.
2. After 3 days, wring your shirt out and give it a quick interior and exterior rubdown with extra or super fine grit sandpaper. Tread lighly over any silkscreening or iron-ons, unless you're going for that look.
3. Hang your shirt to dry in sun. If you live in a place where there is no sun, consider moving.
4. Give the shirt a quick rinse and wring in your sink. Salt's really not that good for your washing machine.
5. Wash and dry your shirt as you normally do. We suggest you don't throw any additional clothes in the load unless you're adventurous. Heaven forbid there's any collateral damage.

Industral Strength Fade*

1. Soak shirt in a mixture of 6 cups water, 2 cups color safe bleach and 1/2 cup salt for 2 days. To make this particular mixture, heat the water and stir in the salt until it has disolved. Let the water return to room temperature and mix in the color safe bleach.
2. After 2 days, pull your shirt out of the mixture and immedeatley throw it into your washer. Wash and dry your shirt as you normally would. As we suggested for the Standard Fade, it may be a good idea to let your shirt fly solo on this load.

* Please note that the industrial strength fade is only suggested on a 50/50 cotton/poly blend. Bleach will weaken the cellulosic fibers on your shirt, so please don't leave the shirt in too long. As with any bleach, it is advised that you check for color fastness as per the instructions on the container before using the above method.

Keep in mind that Preshrunk is not responsible for any shirts that you happen to hose beyond all belief. If they turn out awesome, we'd appreciate any props that you send our way. Reguardless of how it went, we need some feedback to dial the instructions in even further. Cheers!

Apple geeks are having a very good day today. Both the Mac mini and iPod Shuffle were announced in Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote.

Even though I've never met him, I'd qualify Steve Jobs for homeboy status. His company cranks out the tools that help me do exactly what I need to on a daily basis. If I could be at Macworld right now, I'd probably rock the hell out of the shirt to the left while fondling the new products.

Yeah, fondling. What can I say? I'm a sick little monkey.

$14.95 | Credit | URL

Any card carrying hipster loves them some irony. Unfortunately, carrying a card as proof of hipsterdom is not considered, well, hip. Many hipsters speak thru their wardrobe, which is an alright way of going about it.

One could wear a shirt with characters from The Land Before Time on it, but that's a bit too subtle [not to mention mildly fey]. You need to go the opposite direction and beat people over the head with what you're getting at. Like really really hard.

I [heart] Irony pretty much comes out and says what you want to. Sure it's extremely blatant - which is the antithesis of cool for a hipster - but it's so blatant that it somehow manages to shoot back into cool territory again. I'd illustrate with a bell curve, but I don't want the USA Today readers we picked up to get tugwax on their keyboard.

$20.00 | Credit | URL

+ Hello Hipclicks readers! First MSNBC's weblog and now USA Today's...

Comfy blog: Just wanted to share this link to a new blog called Preshrunk, which links to the coolest T-shirts for sale on the Web. I think these are my favorites so far

Now we may lack shiny infographics, but we make up for it by having plenty of snark. Hope you stick around a bit. Thanks for the heads up, Drew.

+ Please, no more CafePress shirt links. Sure, setting up a CafePress shop is quick and painless, but they've managed to set the bar a bit too low. Besides, the quality of their items is pretty crappy. The iron-on transfers used on their shirts wear quickly and the lack of dark colored shirts is a constant letdown.

Now don't get me wrong, the designs that some of you have sent in are really clever. Still, I can't recommend anything sold thru CafePress and still keep a clear conscience. Go talk with a screenprinter. If your shirt idea is really as good as you think it is, you should be able to make your money back.

+ Plenty of you already know this, but the Japanese's t-shirt folding technique is unstoppable. A shout out to Adam for the pointer.

+ Nominations for the 2005 Bloggies close tonight at 10:00pm EST. If you haven't already nominated Preshrunk for "Best New Blog", you've still got some time. I can't guarantee that we'll be as awesome at this time next year, so you may as well nominate us while we're at our peak.

Going along with the theme from our last post, Propaganda Panda is a cute take on the classic Chinese style of propaganda. When I showed this tee to my girlfriend, her face lit up almost instantly. Actually, she called it "adorable, yet menacing", which sort of sums it up nicely if you ask me. There's just something about a smiling panda, with a gun slung over it's shoulder that whispers "I'm a happy go lucky cat, but I'll shoot you if I have to." in a sensitive, reassuring manner.

But as wonderful as the tee is, Sharp As Toast is done completely in flash. This means that there's no easy way for me to link this shirt, which really bites. When will people learn that Flash is best used for minor site enhancements or Strong Bad email? C'est la vie.

Update: One of the cats at Sharp as Toast was nice enough to send us a direct link to the shirt. Thanks Jimm!

$25.00 | Credit | URL

This is why I love the blogosphere:

+ Bill Gates calls free culture advocates "commies" in an interview.
+ Xeni takes it to BoingBoing.
+ Cheeky people create propaganda.
+ A silkscreener likes the graphic and does a run of t-shirts. He charges the low, low price of $5 a shirt.

Anyone care to give me an estimate for the cost per unit for this design on a khaki shirt?

$5.00 | PayPal | URL [via]

What's not to like about the folks at Downhill Battle? They're a ragtag bunch of misfits fighting the good fight against the RIAA. One could say that they're a the A-Team of the internet era - distributed, resourceful and not afraid to get a little dirty.

Downhill Battle manages to sell every one of their tees for the exceedingly low price of $10. That's wicked cheap considering that they're all done on ultra high quality American Apparel shirts, which retail for $15 sans printing. They say they can do that thanks to volume, but I'd wager that crazy Murdoc had something to do with it.

I've had one of these shirts for about six months now and I must say that it's one of the softest I own. The print already has that broken in look and it's held up well in the wash. There's no doubt that I've gotten $10 of use out of the shirt already, but it's still going nice and strong. That being said, I should probably buy a few more. Not because I need a new one, but because supporting Downhill Battle is a good thing.

I love it when a plan comes together...

$10.00 | PayPal | URL

Some of my vegetarian friends suggested that I might have been a jerk a bit earlier. "Dude, Vegans are people too." and "I'd totally kick your ass if I wasn't a pacifist." have been the best emails that I've ever received reguarding a post. And I've been blogging for close to 5 years, so that's saying a lot.

So in the interest of being "fair and balanced", I'll go ahead and throw the vegetarians in the crowd a bone carrot. Props to Monica Waldman for not scolding me out and sending along a link to Herbivore Clothing. Herbivore fills a niche by making fashionable apparel for vegetarians who are getting tired of wearing their Phish shirts everywhere.

We here at Preshrunk are pretty sure that "Go Vegan Or Die" is not Moby's answer to P.Diddy's "Vote Or Die" campaign. In a perfect world it would be, but it's not. We would also like to acknowledge that not all vegetarians are Phish fans. We suspect that not every vegetarian is an atonal, pot smoking jackoff.

$21.00 | PayPal | URL