Printing on felt

[kodonnell]

I want to put a picture (solid colors) on the felt of my table. I have thought about drawing it on with paint pens, airbrush, or some printing technique. Has anyone done this? What works, what doesn't?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

[SDA004]

I'd think the only thing that would work would be silk screen. I could be wrong though.

[Slow Play Ray]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd think the only thing that would work would be silk screen. I could be wrong though.

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw something somewhere where you could iron-on a design onto the felt, but I can't remember where at the moment. I'll post it if I run across it again.

[PinataUT]

I have no experience with the product or vendor.
http://printonit.zoovy.com/category/transferpapers.opaque

[TwinTowers]

Pens would actually work well if your "felt" is a lighter color. Ive seen a table the guy traced a pair of cards in permanent pen on all four corners of the table. Worked great, but the "felt" was blue and it didnt stand out very well.


Air brush is the most effective and is more common. You can do your own with a basic stencil, or take the material to an artist (usually between 50-100 bucks).

And finally iron on transferrs have had good results, but so far they havent been put through the test of time. The fear is having the transfer beging to peel.

If you want something basic on a light color felt, try the marker route. If you want a logo or design, I would go with air-brush.

This very question comes up a lot at a table building forum I frequent.

[gmunny]

You may want to check this poker table forum out. They have discussed this and also have pics of members tables.
scott keen poker table forum (http://www.scottkeen.com/forum/)
G$

[rusellmj]

The best way I've seen is to airbrush. I've seen some really good work on poker tables done with an airbrush.

Russ

[hoterdoc]

the problem with silk-screen printing, and to some degree (?more or less?) with the iron on, is that the ink will be resting on the uppermost layer of your material.

think of the number on the back of a little league baseball jersey - you can feel when your fingers are on or off the number as you run your hand over it (eyes shut of course)

the problem with this would be its tendancy to catch card edges as they are dealt, and cause them to flip.

dye sublimation is a process by which the ink is actually drawn into the material. you would be unable to tell (with eyes closed) when your fingers were on plan felt/material, or over the part with the graphic.

not all materials work well with this. I have just found someone locally to do it for me, and someone else just put the finishing touches on our logo. I will post it once it is done in a few days to a week or so.

check your yellow pages for awards, and also under advertising/novelties, as these people print a lot of tshirts for various events.
aces,
doc

[hoterdoc]

looking at some the links stemming from the scottkeen link above, airbrushing seems to be a better alternative to silk-screening, and is probably much easier to find than dye sublimation.
aces,
doc

[kodonnell]

Thanks for all the posts. I kinda like the airbrush idea and I have a friend who does that kinda stuff. I also thought about letting my players sign their names on the felt using paint pens....may end up being 1 big piece of poker art. But I am worried about the difference in feel and how the cards slide across it. We'll see. I'll post pics when its done.

[kodonnell]

By the way, the design I want to do is my avatar. Our theme is "nights at the round table". The table I have is a 6 ft round table.

[bongrip]

silkscreening that avatar would be a royal pain. silkscreeners usually use the pantone color matching system, and to set up a design like that would be really expensive, and you'd have to break the design into spot colors.

[kodonnell]

In ended up drawing it using paint pens. Overall, it turned out well and was fairly inexpensive. If you are careful using long, straight lines to fill in the color, and smudge it a bit right after coloring it, it turns out well. I am not sure how it will affect the cards sliding on the table, I will post a follow up after tonight when we play on it.

[hoterdoc]

and a pic?
doc

[kodonnell]

Here it is:
http://www.keyit.com/images/velvettable.jpg