The 'ClickShirt' page

The click shirt page is where the buyer will go when they click the shirt that they like the look of to get a better look and hopefully add it to their cart. I have designed it and you can see it here:
http://www.blackhotpink.com/ClickShirtWorkTest.htm
The buttons and drop downs look ugly I know, but they will hopefully be better positioned than that in the end product. The 'add to cart' button works but don't go putting in your credit card details or anything yet! I've just spent the last 5 or so hours tyring to figure out why the 'view cart' button doesn't work. I just dont get it. I can't see any reason in the code as to why it doesn't work. Have emailed Paypal so hopefully I'll get that fixed soon.
This website is taking 10 times longer than it should cos I don't know anything about bloody websites!!

Struggling

I don't know about anyone else but I'm really struggling to find time to do all this work. We're basically working a full time job during the week plus overtime often. By the time I get home I'm so tired I don't want to work and if I do it's usually crappy and I don't like having my weekends ruled over by homework. It is hard to find time to work on research and folio and still get away from the computer occasionally. Is anyone else feeling the same? Anyone else struggling?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Hello there! Well I made another shirt and it wasn't exactly successful but I have learnt some valuable lessons.

I don't know if you can tell from the photos but the stencil bled a bit on the shirt which isn't too bad for a shirt for me but I wouldn't want to be selling that one.
So, the things I learnt:
1. The white paint I have is a crap brand "Hydrotex" and has gone lumpy etc and may have contributed to the bleeding - the other colours I have roll on a lot more nicely.
2. I probably tried to make it too fast and loaded the roller up with too much paint wich would have also caused it to bleed - Slow and steady is better.
3. The gaps and bridges in this stencil are quite small which makes it easy to accidently cut or tear them making the stencil useless. I have a lot too learn about successful bridging. With some counters I have only used on bridge where I should probably use two so it is held down from both directions. However, the method and paint I use - if done slowly and carefully usually pastes these down in place on the shirt as I print... perhaps they should just be a bit thicker.
4. Take the stencil off the shirt before the paint dries. Because the white ink is a particularly thick paint when I let it dry then tried to peel back the stencil it was quite firmly stuck in place which meant a couple of the tiny little bridges ripped off which means I have to cut this stencil again next time I use it.
5. Probably shouldn't put such ugly photos of self up on the internet - but I know a few of you have been wondering what the inside of my nose looks like....
Okay so all up I think I might look into a new white ink before I make the other shirts and in the meantime I'll work on my site.

New Shirt Designs

These are the latest shirt designs. I've refined the type on the 'Bang Bang Bang' shirt and I think it's much better now. The second is a first draft of the 'Music Grid' design and the third is a first draft of the 'Cut Here' design. And I've also started looking at where the designs will be placed on the shirt. The music one may have the earphones going up and around the neck. The scissors one could be moved all around the shirt to 'cut' wherever I want but I think I like it accross the collar bone. Let me know what you think!

working webby trial

I have made and put on the internet a working trial of my website. Let me know what you think and if there are problems with loading etc I'd like to know. I don't know all that much about web design so I don't know yet how to make it load nicely etc... have a look:
www.blackhotpink.com/webworktrial.htm

Webby Webby Woo Woo!

Here are two layouts. I'm going to make a working one when I think more about what I'm going to do. aaah whatever... i just need to stop stuffing around on this website. - its been 6 weeks!!

T-Shirt Sites

I thought I would make a post with some good T-shirt sites I have found. Well, actually some of the sites are crappy but they all interest me in some way.
- www.edoclaundry.com - bad site but interesting concept with shirts.
- www.upperplayground.com
- www.tenthdivision.com
- www.ofthewild.com - very detailed shirt designs
- www.angryassociates.com - they have an opening animation that is similar idea to something i was thinking about doing.
- www.sixeightsevensix.com
- www.howies.co.uk
- www.greenlady.com - the book that this site sells has an interesting design
- www.huntergatherer.net
- www.imperfectionist.co.uk - really like how this site works, so simple
- www.stussyworldtour.com - like the site layout
- www.greedygasguzzlers.com
- www.unit9.com
- www.beat13.co.uk

Temp Site

Have put temporary site up on the internet. Nothing exciting but I thought I should put something there and learn how to actually do it.
www.blackhotpink.com

BlackHotPink website is the devil!

This is an ugly rough mock up of the idea I was just posting about. It think it would be a lot more dynamic - it breaks the grid up a bit so even though everything is stuck in boxes it is still moving around a little. So you'd roll over one of the black and white photos of the stencil and a few of the photos surrounding the one you rolled over would change into the shirt image like in this pic.
I think I can also play with different things being on the 'photos' - they could be polaroids, postcards, playing cards etc with my designs on them or photos of the stencils or have designs cut into them like stencils themselves.

The latest

Okay. Here is my latest idea. The final product would not look quite like this. It's similar to my gridded idea but has lost a bit of grid. The idea would be that the photos slightly overlap, when you roll over them they change to the shirt print. A variation of this idea i want to work on too would be when you roll over a photo then a few photos change to one big pic of the shirt or something like that.
I can't seem to combine the ideas I like from what I have done into one good idea. difficult.

blah

used up entire sketch book. have run out of ideas. hate websites. want to give up. it's a bad day for this research project. :P

...try, try, try again over and over and over

Another Try

Here is another idea. The stencils would be applied to the background - all over it eventually. When the user rolls over the stencils the shirt shows up on the people stencils. There would be a girl too. I hate the layout and background so far but I like the stencil of the guy - although he looks funny in his pink shirt - the black shirt is better. I think i need to work out a much better way of creating the background. hmmm... any thoughts?

Website Progression

1 2
3 4
This is where I'm at as far as designing the website. My most recent steps in order above. Still stuck. Still frustrated. Although I like the direction of the last one and hopefully with a bit of 'fixer-uppering' it may turn into an alright idea. So far it's a swing tag posing as the navigation bar and everything else will sort of float on the background somehow - need to figure that part out. But this is basically what i was thinking the swing tag could look like. Once again.. let me know what you think