the bluecotton blog

I’m often scouring the web for some useful or interesting things involving t-shirts. Here’s a round-up of some great t-shirt related tidbits I was able to find this week.

Neo-Nazi Giveaway T-Shirts Reveal a Secret Message

A group in Germany called “Exit Deutschland” created and gave away t-shirts seemingly in support of Neo-Nazi ideals. However, a hidden message of change and tolerance was revealed after the t-shirts were washed. Check out the full article at Gizmodo.

Measure Up Your Beard with this Clever T-Shirt

The Beardly has created this fun and clever t-shirt (seen above). Where does your beard fall on a scale of “Manly” to “Beardly?”

The 10-Shot T-Shirt Cannon

I couple of months ago we shared how you could build your very own t-shirt cannon. Well, there’s always a bigger gun. Team 254 Robotics of Bellarmine College Prepatory of San Jose built this impressive 10-shot t-shirt cannon. You can read their full log of the build process on their website.

Former Threadless CTO Hired for Obama’s 2012 Campaign

Harper Reed, formerly of the popular “Threadless” t-shirt site, has joined Obama’s 2012 campaign as the Chief Technology Officer. Read the full article from the Chicago Tribune.

T-Shirt Uses Sound Waves to Power Smartphones

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Word Clouds are an easy and visually appealing method of presenting text as an image. Word clouds weight the most frequently used words with a larger font, while less important words become smaller and provide a pleasing background and context to the image.

Word clouds are a great way to spice up your club’s t-shirt when you would like to include everyone’s name in the design. Instead of the predictable columns of names, a word cloud will scatter your member’s around the name of the club.

1. Head over to Wordle to create your word cloud. Paste your text (club roster, club name, school, words that describe the club) into the box. Enter the club name multiple times so it considers this the most important word and makes it the largest word in the cloud.

2. Take a snapshot of your word cloud and save it to your desktop.

3. Come back to the BlueCotton Design Studio and upload your wordle to a t-shirt.

TIPS:
1. Creating your word cloud in black and white at Worldle will allow you to change the color of the text in the BlueCotton Design Studio.

Easy-breezy! Check out a few of word cloud t-shirts I created below.

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A few weeks ago I blogged about Chuck Norris’ favorite t-shirt, the American Apparel TR401. This week we are featuring Tom Dolan’s favorite t-shirt, the American Apparel BB401. Tom loves the light weight, 3.7oz., super soft, 50% polyester / 50% combed-cotton blend, and the durable rib neckband. Unlike other Poly-Cotton t-shirts on the market, the BB401 is made with combed cotton, giving it an ultra soft, worn in feel. This t-shirt’s smooth surface is ideal for screen printing and embroidery. Tom prefers the BB401 to the 2001 because it has a slimmer fit.

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Back in March of 2010, we invited you to play Words with Friends with us. Now we’re throwing down the gauntlet on a new word puzzler. Brought to you by Zynga, Hanging with Friends is the latest game we just can’t stop playing.

If you’ve ever played the popular blackboard game “Hangman” then you already know how to play Hanging With Friends! That’s what it essentially is–a mobile, turn-based version of the casual word guessing game. One really great thing about HWF is that you can have several games going at one time! I currently have 4 games going and am ready to add you to the mix!

Do you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad? If so, play with us! Just download the app to your device, create a new game, and search by any or all of our usernames below!

If you start a game with one of us, let us know that you’re a BlueCotton customer. If you beat us – we’ll send you a BlueCotton prize. Be warned- we’re in it to win it!

• BlueCotton (Mike)
• BlueCottonAngie (Angie)
• saul66 (Dan)
• BCLeann (Leann)

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Check out Cole Borders (part time male model with a full time case of Beiber fever) wearing the DT 104. This District Threads shirt, made of 100%, 4.3 ounce, fine jersey knit cotton has a “soft” hand and appeals to Cole’s sensitive side. Cole loves the fitted shape and fashionable color choices. He is sporting the Sangria color option with the BlueCotton Arch design. Cole’s tough side prefers the double-needle hem.

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Twenty-one years ago tomorrow, on August 12, 1990, Susan Hendrickson made an amazing discovery. In a cliff face near Faith, South Dakota, Hendrickson found what would turn out to be the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in known existence. Eventually named “Sue”–after its discoverer–the skeleton was very well-preserved and over 90 percent complete.

By now you might be wondering, what on earth does this historic event have to do with custom-printed t-shirts? Well, to be honest, nothing except that it’s a great excuse to create some dinosaur-themed designs in our BlueCotton design studio! Below are four dino-designs I created. All of them were made using only clip art and text tools native to the design studio–no uploaded images were used. You can click on the images below to open them in our design studio. Check them out and then create your own!

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