Splotches of color laid in heaps in boxes on the floor of the atrium in the College of Design on Tuesday. Almost everyone who walked through the door — students, professors and administrators — was lured in by the bold and intricate designs spread out on the table. Students worked together in organized chaos to turn blank T-shirts into affordable pieces of original artwork.

The University Print Club has hosted its biannual T-shirt expo and sale for almost three years. The event is traditionally held the week before dead week each semester and has a different theme each time. The theme this semester is fairytales and fantasy. Customers can pick from a wide range of designs to have printed — from landscapes to mythical creatures to animated food.

The club will print on anything that someone brings for $5 as long as it’s cloth and will fit in the press. T-shirts are also for sale. Color shirts are $10 and white shirts are $8. The club uses they money they raise to fund its annual trip to the Southern Graphics Council Conference, which is the largest printmaking conference in the world.

Kinsey Brady, a senior in integrated studio arts with a printmaking emphasis, is one of the organizers of the event. She said along with fundraising, the T-shirt sale helps people learn more about printmaking.

“It’s fun to show people what we do,” Brady said. “They stick us in a corner in the basement and no one even knows we’re back there. I don’t think that anyone even knows that there’s a printmaking major.”

To create the prints the club uses woodcut printing, which is the oldest printing process. The entire process can be seen at the event.

The process begins when the printer makes a pencil sketch of the desired design. The drawing is then transferred onto a piece of linoleum. The negative space is carved away with chisels to produce a relief drawing. Ink is then rolled onto the piece of linoleum and placed face down on the object to be run through the printing press.

Brady said that printing the shirts in front of people shows them that there are other ways of printing besides screen-printing and computers.

The club invites people to help with the printing process and works to get non-printmaking majors involved. Members include graphic and interior design students.

Liping Vong is a junior and one of the many graphic design majors in the club. She said she got involved with the club through her friends and has learned how closely printmaking is related to her major.

“I’m learning a lot of stuff,” Vong said. “Old graphic designers used to be print makers. I was like, ‘Oh cool, I’m like the old farts who used to do this.’”

Brady has been involved with the event for two years and said over that time the event has grown.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Brady. “We started by going to Walmart and buying packs of T-shirts and now we’re ordering wholesale high quality tagless shirts. We’ve gotten more organized, but it’s been a learning process.”

Brady said they sold more than 20 shirts in two hours.

Chris Riggert, sophomore in landscape architecture, said he bought a shirt at the sale because of the cool designs. He said he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to support other design students.

“We have a cultural hearth here and we’re able to utilize the artwork and creativity of our peers,” Riggert said. “I’d rather spend my money on prints from my peers than go to Target or Walmart and give them my money because these people will actually see the money. They’ll actually benefit from my $10.”

The University Print Club will be making and selling T-shirts from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m on Wednesday in the College of Design atrium.