Author Topic: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?  (Read 2074 times)

Offline Fresh Baked Printing

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Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« on: January 04, 2012, 02:42:56 PM »
Thinking about getting a white, heather and black tee and maybe just using a cardboard stencil, squeegeeing a print a thumb dabs size worth of each ink color I stock onto each shirt color.
What you think? Dumb?
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Offline Frog

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Re: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2012, 03:02:04 PM »
Not dumb, but a fair amount of work
I do this on some common colors for which I offer choices, especially custom mixes that have become standards, like yellows, and greens and blues.

Years ago, Union's Navy was really dark, and I mixed it 50/50 with Royal to produce what I called "Cal Blue". When swatches were compared,  many folks chose it over the stock Navy.

It also comes in handy when someone's artist wants a Pantone color, but I show them one of my "stock" colors which is close.
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Offline ScreenFoo

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Re: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2012, 03:16:09 PM »
I need to do it again, but I've done white pellons like this for stock and custom colors--I just used a 1/2" section of a vinyl squeegee without a screen.  It's handy in that you can tell by the look of it how opaque an ink is.

The grey and black are a good idea, although the easy way I was doing it wouldn't work...  if you were doing black, would you print an underbase and overprint?

The original reason I did it was for "sale" colors--we gave a bunch of customers a nickel a print off if they picked custom ink colors we overmixed and would never get orders for.

Offline Socalfmf

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Re: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2012, 03:24:44 PM »
here is what we have



plus we use names like Palomar Red, Palomar Blue ect...so that way we know what color it is but the customers if they leave will not...ahhahahahahahah...

we have about 5 of these panels...

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Offline inkman996

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Re: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2012, 03:50:30 PM »
Here is what I used to do. When printing a job that had a color I wanted sampled on these fabric blanks we have I would finish the run then tape off a square then slide the fabric panel to where I need it and print that color. Takes longer but no extra work.
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Offline jsheridan

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Re: Anybody ever make a custom ink swatch chart?
« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2012, 09:04:04 PM »
here is what we have



Sams way works very well. You can hole punch and store them in a 3-ring binder. .
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