STOP Making These 10 Sublimation Mistakes

I don't know if you all can hear this noise in the background, but you're gonna be surprised. We have done something terrible. And unfortunately, it just doesn't work. Ugh, y'all, this is where ya girl messed up. And let me just be the first to tell you. I know, I know, it's tragic, and I should have my hind end kicked for it. I get it, I get it. Okay, so I have done something and I've really messed up. But I thought, I've messed up, and I know that you all out there are probably doing things that you should not be doing when it comes to sublimation. I'm talking to myself with one of these as well. So if you are a sublimation crafter or you've ever thought about sublimation and you have found yourself at this video, we're gonna be talking about all the things that you should not be doing with sublimation. Now, there are like 10 or 12 things that I'm gonna tell you guys, and these are things that we have done ourselves, and we have realized, yeah, we shouldn't be doing that. I don't know if you all can hear this noise in the background, but you're gonna be surprised. We have done something terrible, and I'm trying to fix it. But I'm gonna tell you all what not to do so that you don't make the same mistake. So if you are new here, my name is Lauren, and I am a craft producer here at Makers Gonna Learn, where we strive to bring you inspiration, education, and motivation with all things crafty. Most of the time, you're gonna see us doing crooked stuff, but we still do a lot of other things as well, and sublimation is one of those. Now, before we start talking about all of the things that you should stop doing with sublimation, if you've ever thought about trying out sublimation as a different craft technique, y'all, we love sublimation, because one thing is this is permanent, absolutely permanent. It does not go anywhere after you've sublimated. So if you've ever thought about learning, we have a course inside Makers Gonna Learn called Makers Gonna Sublimate, where we teach you everything that you need to know about sublimation, from which printer to purchase, setting it up, getting the right color profiles, all the way through best printing practices and pressing practices, and everything else. So if you are interested in that, make sure you click that first link down below and check us out. We have a $7 trial membership where you can try us out for seven days, and you can get access to that course immediately. And not only that, you do get 20 download credits so that you can go into all of our cut files and fonts and pick either 20 fonts, 20 cut files, or a mixture of both, just so that we can say thank you for trying us out. So you really have nothing to lose if you wanna learn about sublimation. Like I said, you can get instant access to that sublimation course. Check out that link. Now, let's talk about what we're not gonna do when it comes to sublimation. Okay, so the very first thing that I wanna say when it comes to things we need to stop doing when it comes to sublimation, is stop thinking that we're gonna get the best results on a colored substrate or a colored shirt, a colored background. Because y'all, as much as I've tried, and as many times as I've tried different methods, sublimating on color just doesn't give you the same results as you do when you do it on a white or like a cream T-shirt. Your colors end up just looking muddy. And unfortunately, it just doesn't work. Now, if you're wanting to do a black design, black design is fine on colors, but that's about the only thing that you can do on color. So we need to stop thinking that colors are gonna work, that we can figure it out. Y'all, it's just not gonna work. And while we're talking about shirts, we're gonna stop just feeling of a shirt and be like, oh yeah, that's polyester, or thinking that a 50 count polyester shirt is going to give you the best results. Once again, to get the best results, you have to have a 65% polyester count or higher. Now you will be able to sublimate on something that is lower like a 50 or a 40%, but you're not gonna get those vibrant colors that you're looking for. It's still just going to end up looking faded. So we're gonna stop doing anything less than 65% polyester count. Now, the next thing that we've got to stop doing is going to be related to our heat press. And y'all, if you are not getting the results that you want with your sublimation, we have to stop trusting our heat press by what it is saying, because here's the thing, not all heat presses are made the same. And sometimes you have to double check what the actual temperature of your plate is. Now, we have a really good heat press here. We got this one from Heat Press Nation. We've also used the StarCraft one that you can sometimes get from 143. Most of the time, it's out of stock. Anyway, we have had really good results from both of our heat presses. We have had other heat presses that we no longer use where we did have issues. And what you can do is you can get a thermometer. There's actually like laser thermometers. Check the temperature of your heat press. Stop trusting what the dial says and actually figure out what the true temperature is because sublimation is dependent on that heat and pressure setting. So we've got to stop just blindly trusting our heat press if it's not giving us the results that we want. Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is going to have to do with your printer. And y'all, we have got to stop thinking that just the standard color profiles for our printer is going to work because I'm here to tell you that you have got to get those color profiles dialed in. It is truly going to make a world of difference getting those color profiles dialed in and making sure that you have the right color profile for whatever printer that you use. Now, if you're confused and you want to know more about how to set up those color profiles, once again, check out that link down below for the MGL $7 trial. You can get access to that Makers Gonna Sublimate course immediately and we have all of that in the course. So go ahead and check that out. Now, while we're talking about printers, y'all, this is where ya girl messed up. And let me just be the first to tell you. This thing has not been on. I even hate to admit this. I don't think this printer has been turned on for three months. I know, I know, it's tragic and I should have my hind end kicked for it. I get it, I get it. We've been super busy. We've been doing so many other things, but this printer right here is what made me realize I got it out today and I thought I should stop doing that. And then I was like, wait, if I do this and other sublimation crafters may also be doing it, why wouldn't I just tell you guys what do we gotta stop doing? So this is, once again, I'm speaking to myself here. I've got to stop not printing on this printer because sublimation ink gets clogged pretty easily. So you should stop letting your sublimation printer sit. We have got to be printing on our sublimation printers to get the best results out of them and to honestly just not tear them up. We've got to be printing at least once a month. So this is my vow to you all that I'm going to be getting both of our sublimation printers out. I'm gonna be doing all of the printhead cleanings, the nozzle checks, and you know what? I might even bring you all along with me in case you all have done this as well so that we can kind of maybe learn together. You can see the heartache of getting it, the colors set back again, making sure everything is going good. So anyway, there may be a new series coming about unclogging our sublimation printer, but that is the one thing that we're gonna stop doing. We have got to stop letting them sit and just getting clogged. You have truly invested in this printer. I just keep thinking how much we paid for it and I sit and let it get clogged. Anyway, I will fix it. It is fine, but we're gonna stop doing that. Now this next one is one that I have also done before, but we've got to stop doing this, especially if you are sublimating on textiles. And here's the thing, guys. We've got to stop just putting our shirt or whatever we're sublimating on down, and then our design, and pressing without pre-pressing. We must always pre-press our shirts. And it is so important to do this because fabric and textiles, they hold moisture naturally. Even though it is polyester and it is a moisture-wicking fabric, it is still going to naturally hold moisture. So what this pre-press does is a couple things. It actually irons out the wrinkles so that you have a perfectly flat, even surface to add your design, but it also gets all of that moisture out, which truly helps prevent ghosting from happening. Because if there's moisture present, it's just going to make that ink spread instead of it going straight to that polyester substrate. So we just want to make sure we are pre-pressing and getting all that moisture out and getting the wrinkles out. Speaking of pressing, another thing we're going to stop doing is thinking that because this is a flat surface and we have our print, that we do not have to tape it down. I want you to stop thinking, just because it's flat, it's not going to move. I'm not going to tape it down because we want to make sure we create that barrier so that there is absolutely zero movement. Even though this is flat, fabric still has movement, but adding that tape really ensures that even if there is movement in our plate, you can see sometimes our plate here will move around. What if our plate moved it as we were pressing it down or we accidentally brought it up and there was a little bit of static and it moved our design? So you just have to remember that we are always, always making sure that we tape our designs down and we stop thinking that it's just going to be okay because it's flat. Now, speaking of taping and making sure things stay secure, if you are sublimating on cups and you are not using a mug press or a tumbler press and you are using a convection oven, great. I love that method. But one thing we're going to stop doing if we are using a convection oven, hear me out, we're going to stop sublimating without these silicone wraps. So I'm going to grab one of these, maybe take both of these. Let's come back here. I want to come back here into the supply room because I want to show you kind of how these silicone wraps work. So this is actually a sublimation mug. It is a metal one, love. So normally, if you are sublimating, you would tape everything down really well. And if you're doing it in a convection oven, you would place it in the convection oven. Here's the issue. If you are doing this method with the convection oven, the issue is there is still a chance of there being a gap between your paper and your design, even though you taped it down. It's just one of those things that there is probably a chance. So if you add one of these silicone wraps, you can see here that it completely encloses that cup and make sure there is no room for that design to go. So this silicone wrap essentially acts as the pressure. Like when we are pressing with a heat press, that arm comes down and that top plate adds pressure. So essentially, this silicone wrap is adding pressure to the design if you are using a convection oven. So if we're doing that method, we're gonna stop thinking that taping it down is good enough because it's not. Got to get you some of these silicone cup wraps. So let's head on back in here and let's talk about the environment that you sublimate in because that is also very important. And one thing that we want to make sure that we stop doing is that we stop sublimating in a humid environment. Once again, I talked about getting the moisture out of our shirt with our heat press. You don't want to have moisture present in the air where you are sublimating. Now, for us here in our area, it's not that big of a deal, but for some places, humidity is a big factor. So if you have an area where you are sublimating, we want to make sure that maybe even adding a dehumidifier could really help because the environment matters and we're gonna stop thinking that it doesn't. Now, let's talk about a couple more things that we're gonna stop doing. And one of them is this right here, and this is a polyester spray. Some people will use this on cotton shirts to create a polyester layer on their shirts. What we're gonna stop doing is thinking that this really works because y'all, it's terrible and it doesn't. That's all I have to say about that. I am not a fan of that. It just doesn't give you even coverage in my opinion. I've tried it multiple times. I just can't get the coverage that I want and it truly just makes my sublimation look patchy. So we're gonna stop thinking that that makes something sublimation ready because I just think that at this point in the game, they have way too many great sublimation blanks for any of us to be using that stuff anymore. Now, another thing that we're gonna stop doing is we're gonna stop just, if there's anybody here, first of all, that is using just plain copy paper to protect your design, that's a no-no. We're gonna stop doing that and we're gonna make sure that we are always using butcher's paper and or a Teflon sheet. In my opinion, I like butcher's paper just a little bit better because it is moisture wicking, meaning that it catches the moisture and plus I have ruined so many Teflon sheets because the sublimation has gone through to this Teflon sheet, whereas if I would have just used butcher's paper, I could have thrown it away. But we're gonna stop thinking that we don't need protection, that we don't need to protect our plate and that we don't need butcher's paper. So we're gonna stop doing that. And y'all, those are the things that we are going to stop doing when it comes to sublimation. And yes, I am coming over here to our printer because this thing is what brought us here. So if you want to see me go through the process of unclogging this thing because I've got to stop letting my printer sit and I know you do too. So if you want me to go through this whole process, leave me a comment down below, like this video, let me know you're interested in seeing more of this journey. And if you are, I will make sure that we record all of this for you. So let me know down below. If you haven't already, hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to our channel and hit that bell notification so that you can be notified every single time we get crafty. And once again, if you are ready to learn sublimation, but you want some help, check out that $7 trial for MGL Plus down below. You get instant access to this Maker's Guide to Sublime course. You literally have nothing to lose. Check it out. I'll see you guys in the next one.