Processing times vary based on the time of year. We are very busy from mid-September through December and from mid-March through early June. In Fall and Spring, it is normal to have a 4-week processing time. August, early Sept, January, February, and early March have much shorter processing times. Please plan early for graduation shirts. The website frequently updates our current turnaround time as needed.

In most cases, regular USPS mail is ok. Please be aware that the time it takes USPS to deliver mail can fluctuate significantly. If timing is critical, we highly recommend UPS, USPS or FedEx priority services. In all cases, we recommend getting tracking information when sending in an order. Please use this tracking information to check when we received your order instead of calling or emailing with this question.

If you sent your order with tracking information as suggested in the previous question, you can verify that way. We cash checks and send Square credit card payment links the day we receive your order. If you order was paid by PO, no notification is sent when we receive your order. However, regardless of the payment method, we will contact you if there is an issue with your order when it arrives. If everything is submitted correctly, you won’t hear from us until we send the layout for approval.

Beginning in March, we will likely need 3-4 weeks for processing—from the time we receive your order. Plan accordingly for spring orders—DO NOT wait until the last minute. A rush fee will apply for any order that needs to ship within 10 business days.

Yes. Orders can be prioritized to have turnaround times no longer than 10 business days for $125 per order when this option is selected and paid on the order form. This price also includes 2nd day air shipping. If you need your order in May, it is suggested to send it no later than March 31st. It is highly likely a rush fee will be necessary for any orders sent in April or May for orders needed mid-May through early June. Make sure your order is 100% correct. If you send in bad artwork, don’t make quick payments (credit card orders), make changes to your order, take too long to sign the approval form, don’t respond to emails quickly for any order issues, etc., those delays are in addition to the 10 business day turnaround.

A business day is any day we are scheduled to be open. Generally, this is Monday-Friday. We are closed all federally observed holidays and select other dates throughout the year. We rarely close during peak season, except for holidays. Our hours can be found here: https://www.aplusimages.com/contact-us/

Let’s start by asking you NOT to do this to us. We have warned you to read all instructions (including this FAQ) and order early. These orders take time to process, and now there is an additional step. We aren’t just pulling an item off the shelf that is ready to go and putting it in a box like Amazon. Throwing in last minute orders on top of an already crazy schedule is extremely difficult. Should this situation occur, you can contact us to ask about the possibility. If we can accommodate it, the fee is $200 per class. Payment must be made immediately via credit card. We will not wait for checks or purchase orders in this circumstance.

We recently made this change due to overwhelming demand. Every year, especially in May, we get an abundance of last-minute orders and customers who request us to rush their orders. We have STRONGLY encouraged and incentivized everyone to order early with discounts during off-peak periods. Too many people are waiting until the last minute to order and even with extra staff and crazy amounts of overtime, it’s too much. The rush fees will help cover the overtime costs and expedited shipping for those who require it. ORDER EARLY TO AVOID RUSH FEES!

If the time it takes to receive your order doesn’t matter, regular mail is normally fine. Though not common, we have seen USPS envelopes take a month to get to us. That said, we HIGHLY encourage you to send orders via a trackable, expedited service. That way, we should receive it quickly, and you’ll know when we do!

No! Lines in pencil are almost always too thin and/or too light. Also, children tend to erase and the smudges left behind will show up on the shirt.

The thickness of the marker should be as thick (or a little thicker) as the oval in the template for the face. The marker should not be old and dried out as this faded look will appear on your shirt instead of solid, dark lines. The best marker is a brand new Sharpie Fine Point Marker.

Drawings on larger templates will be likely be reduced by 40% or more. Fine lines in the drawing become approximately half as thick as they appear in the drawing. These lines will not show up well on a shirt. (The exception to this is the Sharpie Fine Point Marker. Its name is misleading, but it works better than everything else.)

The thickness of the marker should be as thick (or a little thicker) as the oval in the template for the face.  The marker should not be old and dried out as this faded look will appear on your shirt instead of solid, dark lines.  The best markers to use are Crayola Conical Tip Classic Markers.  Please DO NOT use pastels or neon markers as colors do not reproduce well.

The printed shirts look very similar to the drawings on paper, but some slight differences may be noticed.  Look at our sample shirts page to see an example of a full color Classroom Faces T-Shirt.

This is hard to explain since every order is unique, but we’ll try. For the majority of layouts, the drawing will look very similar to how the drawings are. The less detailed the drawing is and the few drawings there are on the shirt, the more accurate it will look. If the drawings have extreme detail (thin lines very close together), and/or the are a lot of drawings on the shirt (generally more than 30), when the drawings shrink, the gaps between lines shrink. When you convert the drawings into screen printing art, some of these gaps may fill in. The happens more often when using light colored inks on dark colored shirts vs. dark color inks on light colored shirts because more ink gets put onto the shirt. You should not expect identical print quality between the proof on a laser printer or high resolution monitor vs the actual screen-printed shirt.

NO! Young children will not trace over each line perfectly. Any pencil lines left in the drawing will show up on the shirt. For example, a “smile” that is not covered exactly with a marker, could result in 2 smiles on the face—one from the pencil line and one from the marker.

Effective July 1, 2019, all orders of 15 or more paid shirts are eligible for a Free Teacher Shirt! No promo code is needed to take advantage of this offer. Because no promo code is needed, other promo codes may be combined with this offer when available! To order your free teacher shirt, add your size to the counts on the left side of the order form, but don’t add that number to the totals on the right side of the order form. In a nutshell, pay for one less shirt than you need. See this example for details. NOTICE: The free teacher shirt offer must be claimed when the order is submitted. It cannot be claimed after we receive the order. Reading our instructions is important!

It is possible; however, the ink color must be the same on all shirts. A few classes have chosen heliconia for girls, royal blue for boys, and used white ink for all of the shirts. Please be sure to submit one order form for each shirt color you plan to use for each class/order and staple them together. Please refer to the Shirt and Ink Color Compatibility Chart on our site.

NO! Please use the same size template for all the drawings in your class.

No! Each class use a different shirt/ink color combination.

No. With our new everyday low pricing, we offer the same pricing to schools that submit one order as we do to schools that submit 20 orders. The new low pricing is what used to be only offered to schools submitting 3 or more classes at once.

You may use your own personal check, a school/PTA check, credit card (Visa, MC, Discover, AE), or school purchase order. Full payment must be included in the order when you mail it, with the exception credit/debit cards. An approved copy of the purchase order must accompany orders using this method of payment to count as payment. For orders choosing credit/debit cards, you will be emailed a link to pay online.

No. NSF checks from parents have caused too many problems and we no longer will accept them.

Any age group that cannot draw good pictures can do handprints or thumbprints instead. (See handprint sample on the “sample” link.)

Instead of using our templates, use a blank white sheet of paper for each student.  Under the print, write the child’s name.  You will want to keep the name relative in size to the print as we will shrink this image dramatically to fit it on the shirt and you want to maintain a legible name. Use BLACK finger paint for the hand-print and write the name with a black marker (unless you are doing our full-color option on white shirts).  Make sure to make a firm hand-print so the print on the paper is very dark.  Using other color inks and/or light pressure will not result in a good look when we print the shirts.

Possibly, but not likely. The size of the layout depends on how many drawings are on the shirt, along with the smallest shirt size in the order.  Except for very small classes (<12 drawings), we will likely shrink the drawings.

Anything you want! Most teachers include some of the following: School name, teacher name, grade level, school year, class nickname. See our “samples” link for ideas.

There is no set limit; however, getting too much wording detracts from the pictures and can make the text VERY small. Our graphics department will determine the layout for your shirt design.

Absolutely! Almost all orders include pictures of the teacher and teacher assistant. Some include the principal and other school personnel. It is your class shirt—Do what you want!

We have done faculty and grade level shirts with 90 faces and still had room for more. Drawing sizes must be reduced more than normal. The size partially depends on the number of drawings and smallest shirt size ordered. We can print up to 10.5” x 10.5” designs.

Let’s start by saying we don’t recommend this. By default, our designers will put the teachers at the top, and the kids
below them. The drawings are arranged by a variety of factors, including width and height of drawings, so the layout looks good. For example, if you have 25 drawings and 5 are taller than the rest, those will go in their own row. If you put one tall drawing in each row, we may have to shrink all the drawings more than usual to accommodate your wishes. We also try to alternate boys and girls. If you must have drawings in a specific order (even if it is only the teachers), please draw a mock layout of how you would like your drawings arranged. Simply stacking the drawings in the order you want them is NOT an alternative to making a mock layout. Artwork charges will apply if you ask us to rearrange drawings after the layout proof is sent.

It may be possible. We will need high quality, black and white artwork (no halftones). If you would like to do this, please email us a copy of the design and then give us a call to discuss it. Copyrighted logos or artwork cannot be used (other than your own school/organization.)

Some teachers have told us they draw a big template on the blackboard and make a sample drawing—showing things not to do as well as a correct drawing. Some teachers even have a couple of students come up and draw on the blackboard. This probably works better than pointing at a small sheet of paper.

Yes you can, as long as you follow these directions (if you don’t, we’ll ask you to submit new order forms): You need 3 orders forms: 1 for the AM class, one for the PM class, one for both. On the AM class, only order the shirts that have this on the front. On the PM class, only order the shirts that have this on the front. For the 3rd form, order the shirts that have both a front and a back. At the top of the form where you would normally put text on top, put “AM on front, PM on back.” On the 3rd form, add $3 for shirts with dark ink, $4 for white or yellow ink to the costs of the other shirts in your order. Full color prints are $4 for the back side. In the event you need to pay for rush service for an order like this, this is considered 2 classes (2 fees), even though there are 3 order forms.

So that you can approve the spelling in the wording you gave us and to make sure all of the children are in the layout. Your approval of the layout protects both of us from any mistakes. It also gives you once last chance to make any changes (for a small fee) before it is too late.

When we email or fax you the layout, we are also scheduling your printing. If you do not approve the layout in the time allotted we will pull you order from the schedule and not reschedule it until we have received your approval. This could add up to a week or more delay before we ship your order.

We use a high quality Gildan, 100% preshrunk cotton (90% cotton/poly for sport grey and ash), 6.1 ounce (heavyweight) t-shirts.

The cost of making a screen for the screen printing, plus the costs for the graphics time involved in making the layout have been incorporated into the shirt prices. (There are no extra set-up or screen charges). If we had lower minimums, like 8 or 10 shirts, the individual prices for all orders would have to be higher. If you need less than 15 shirts, an artwork charge will apply to cover the graphics time and screen costs.

High numbers of drawings (usually for faculty shirts) require a great deal of graphics time to put the layout together. Instead of raising prices for everybody, we felt it was more fair to have these orders cover their own additional costs by ordering more shirts.

Shipping charges within the continental US are fairly standard.  Once a package leaves this area, the costs can skyrocket.  Since this situation doesn’t occur very often, we handle those charges on a case by case basis.  This makes shipping easier for 98% of our customers.

Full color shirt designs are only available on white shirts so any color marker can be used when making the drawing and will show up on the shirt. If you chose a royal blue shirt and a student’s drawing had royal blue marker in it, it would get lost in the design.

Yes! We use the 480 and Hybrid series inks from One Stroke Inks. Inks are made in the USA, 3rd party tested, and fully CPSIA compliant. More information can be found here.

Many preschools and kindergartens with small classes combine the classes and make one shirt with all the faces.

Have you offered shirts to the parents? Many parents will order a shirt if given the opportunity. (See next question.) If you are still short of 15, a $35 artwork charge applies. If you are only a few shirts short, it may be cheaper to buy the shirts to have as extras than to pay the artwork charge. Promotions cannot be used (including the free teacher shirt) on orders with less than 15 paid shirts.

Yes, many parents buy shirts. Make sure you offer the parents a chance to get a shirt. Parents love having a shirt with a drawing done by their child.

Yes! We have purchased new printing equipment and as a result we can now offer reprint shirts for only $18 (add $3 for 2XL+) each shipped! For all reorders under 12 shirts, we can offer shirts using direct-to-garment digital printing. Most ink colors will come close to matching the original screen print ink color. Metallic Silver, Metallic Gold, and Fluorescent Green inks cannot be reproduced digitally. Metallic Silver will be printed as grey, Metallic Gold will be printed as Vegas Gold, and Fluorescent Green will be printed as a bright Lime Green. Full color reprints will look identical, as they were printed digitally initially. Reorders over 12 shirts will be printed using the same inks as the original order. If you want to change the layout, artwork charges will apply.

Yes, Classroom Faces® can be used by sports teams, Cub Scouts, Brownies, clubs, family reunions, Kiwanis clubs, etc.

There is no age limit. We have done Classroom Faces™ shirts for High School AP calculus classes and Family Reunions.

From time to time we offer specials on our website, blog, Facebook page, Instagram page, and via promotions with other social media accounts. Putting a valid “promo code” on the order form ensures that you will receive the correct special. No promo code is needed for the free teacher shirt offer. Only one free teacher shirt per order is permitted. Look for promo codes on social media and your favorite teacher influencers in off-peak periods.

We accept checks, money orders, approved purchase orders, and credit/debit cards. If you wish to pay by credit or debit card, you will be emailed an online invoice via Square that you can pay online. All other forms of payment must accompany the order. Orders are held until payment is received in full. Turnaround times are extended for unpaid orders.

By not accepting cards via the order form or over the phone, we reduce our liability. Now, only the person who is paying sees the payment information. Nobody at our company has any access to credit/debit card information. This is just one way we can help keep your data secure.

We assume when you send an order to us that you want to receive your shirts. There are costs associated with processing your order, ordering shirts, and completing your layout. Depending on when you wish to cancel your order, an appropriate fee will apply to cover those costs. Full cancellation policy details can be found on our Pricing page. Additionally, when a refund is applicable, it may only be possible in the form of a credit. See the next question for more details.

For orders paid by check, ACH Deposit, debit, or credit card, we do not issue refunds for any reason. Any money owed (whether from a cancellation, over-payment, etc.) will be issued as a credit towards a future order. We will not issue refunds or credits for differences in promotional pricing. Please double check your math before submitting an order.

Only personal orders from Indiana pay 7% sales tax. All tax-exempt school orders MUST include a copy of an ST-105 tax exemption form. School orders that are taking advantage of their tax-exempt status must pay for their order with a form of payment that comes from the school. Example: A room mom organizing a Classroom Faces order in Indiana cannot use a school’s tax-exempt form and pay for the order with a personal credit card or check.

YES!!! A large percentage of orders that come in have errors on the order form of some kind. Keeping a copy of what you sent to us will make it easier for you to address those errors once we identify them.

Have your accounting department email info@classroomfaces.com for a copy of our EIN. A+ Images is incorporated, so there is never a need to send us a 1099 form for tax purposes.

We are an Indianapolis, IN based garment decorator. We serve several niche markets by offering a variety of garments with our own designs and can also customize designs with school names. “Classroom Faces®” is the name we have given to these specialized class shirts. You can view our custom teacher/staff/school shirts by visiting www.aplusimages.com/custom-school-and-teacher-shirts/.

It is often the best way to contact you about a question or problem with your order.  Additionally, your layout will be sent to this for quick approval and your UPS tracking information will be emailed to you once we ship your shirts!  We NEVER give or sell your email address (or any other info) to any 3rd parties.