Let’s get started by talking about your supplies in detail.
Getting to Know Your Supplies:
Your Speedball kit includes a 10” x 14” screen. Even though this process is often referred to as silk screen printing, the actual mesh used in the screen is not silk but a plastic monofilament. Silk was used in the past, but today, silk screen prints are made with this special plastic monofilament that is more durable.
Sometimes you will hear people refer to the size of the screen’s mesh. A 110 mesh means that there are 110 openings in the screen per square inch. A 110 mesh works great for most t-shirt designs, while a 220 mesh (much smaller holes) can create great detailed prints with fine linework done onto paper.
There are two sides to every screen, the “well side” and the “flat side.”
The “well side” is the side that is the back of the frame. It is the part of the screen that can hold ink. It looks like this when it has an image painted on it:
(NOTE: My screen has duct tape on it because it is an old repurposed screen. You will learn more about how to repurpose old screens in lesson 4. Your new screen will not have duct tape on the wood and does not need duct tape.)
The “flat side” is the side that is also referred to as the front of the frame. The flat side of the screen is the part that will be touching your t-shirt or paper as your print with your screen. Here is an example of what the flat side looks like:
The squeegee is the tool that we will use to drag screen filler and ink across the screen. It is essential to printing, and it looks like this:
You have four different colors of fabric ink in your kit. You will have process cyan (blue – not pictured), process magenta, process yellow, and black. The black is the best color to use for your first time printing because it is the easiest to work with as far as consistency goes. The cyan, magenta, and yellow inks are a bit too drippy. Please be advised that these inks work best on light colored shirts. If you try to print with the yellow on a black shirt, it will not show up because it is too translucent.
If you really want to print dark colored shirts, Speedball also makes a line of Opaque Fabric Screen Printing Inks that will print well over black t-shirts and other dark colors.
When buying additional colors of ink to print on fabric in the future, please be advised that Speedball also makes Acrylic Screen Printing Inks that are for paper only and cannot be used on fabric.
The fabric ink we are using is specially made for printing on t-shirts, totes, and other fabrics, because it can be heat set with an iron to ensure that the design will not fade in the wash.
Screen filler is used to block out areas of the screen where you do not want the ink to travel through. It is brick red in color, and the bottle will look like this:
Drawing fluid acts as a resist when creating your image on the screen. It is used in conjunction with screen filler, and it is blue in color inside a bottle that looks like this:
You will also need some sharpie markers, but any permanent black marker will do. These will be used to trace your drawings or designs onto the screen.
The kit also comes with a paintbrush, but you may want to use some brushes you already have on hand – I recommend having a brush that is smaller than the kit’s brush, plus a brush that is larger as well.
A spoon or a spatula is very useful to distribute ink onto your screen while printing. I keep several studio-only spatulas by my printing station at all times.
You will also need access to an outdoor hose, preferably with a spray nozzle attachment. If you don’t have a spray nozzle, then use your finger over the top of the hose to create a bit of added pressure when rinsing. Alternatively, if you do not have a hose, you can do most of the washing out in a bathtub or large sink using a sponge – the process will just take a bit longer.
You’ll also need old newspapers to protect your work surfaces, paper towels for cleanup, and a sponge to help you wash out ink from the screen.
It is very helpful to have a small piece of cardboard from an old box to put inside t-shirts and totes while printing. My cardboard piece is 12” x 12” and fits nicely inside each t-shirt while I print. It will create a nice flat surface for printing, and it will also absorb any excess ink and keep it from leaking through the shirt and onto the back of the shirt as you print.
In order to heat set the shirt at the end, you will need an iron and an ironing board plus a piece of parchment paper. By heat setting the shirt (which we will discuss further in lesson 3), you are ensuring that the image will not wash off in the washer or dryer during your laundering process. If you don’t heat set your image, part of it will likely wear off very quickly after laundering and could stain other clothes in your load of laundry.
I hope that was a good overview of the supplies. Of course, you will learn more about each of them and everything they can do as you start to use them in the upcoming lessons!
Creating an Image to Print
Let’s talk about the kind of images we can use for the silk screen process! For your first image, I’d like to keep things simple and follow a few guidelines to make it as easy as possible. As you get better at silkscreen, you can use more complex images, but keeping it simple in the beginning is a good idea as you are learning the process.
For your first image, please follow these rules:
*No text or letters
*Use a silhouette (of an animal, object, or a person)
Think about an animal, object, or person you love and would like to screen print over and over again in many different colors. The nice thing about screen printing is that once you make your screen with an image on it, you can print that image many, many times and even save the screen for use for several years!
I often keep my images around for at least three years, and some of my screens are 15 years old with images I created 15 years ago! They still hold up and make great prints even to this day. They may even have 15 more years left in them if I am careful with the screens and wash the ink out of them very well after each use.
To create a nice silhouette, you can use tracing paper and trace a photo you already have of a person’s profile. Then you can Xerox and enlarge that image to use it for your screen. Or try your hand at drawing a freehand silhouette! I love to draw and will often make many “drafts” of an image before finalizing the image for my screen. Spend a lot of time making an image that you will love, and don’t be afraid to keep re-copying and refining your image until you get something you are truly happy with.
Below is a silhouette that I drew freehand onto a decorative piece of paper. You will see my original drawing on the left. I copied the image with a copy machine and used white out to refine it a bit, then I copied it again, and I ended up with the image on the right:
The profile of a person would make a great first image for screen printing because, aside from the nose and the lips, there aren’t too many tiny details. The smaller the detail, the harder it will be to transfer your image onto the screen, so we want something easy to start out with. Small details can also prove to be difficult during the printing process, so you want to avoid anything too detailed for your first attempt and printing.
I also decided to do a second screen featuring my dog, Ruby Roo, so I found this image of her inside one of my scrapbooks:
Next, I copied and enlarged Ruby’s image until it was the size I wanted it to be. I used the t-shirt I wanted to print it on as a guideline for how big to make my image. I ended up making the image of her about 6 or 7” wide.
My next step was to take a sharpie or permanent marker and draw an outline around the dog so that I would have a guideline to follow. Take a look at how I did this in the next photo:
Now you have an outline to trace onto your screen!
Transferring the image onto your screen is as simple as tracing…
Transfering Your Image Onto the Screen:
Step 1:
Place your image face up on your work surface, then place your screen on top if it, flat side down. It will look like this:
You can see your image and outline by looking through the screen.
(NOTE: I am using a different type of screen here that I had on hand which has a yellow mesh. Yours will have a white mesh.)
Step 2:
Now trace the image onto your screen with a sharpie or permanent marker using the outline you made as a guide:
Please watch the video below to see me transfer my images onto the screen. Transferring the image is a pretty simple process, so most of your time during this lesson will be spent drawing and creating the image you wish to use for your first print. Take your time selecting an image to use and make sure your image is something you will love, considering you will be printing it over and over again onto shirts, fabric, and tote bags!
Before you do the next lesson, it's a good time to start raiding your closets and find some blank shirts you can print on! I don’t recommend buying new blank shirts to print on initially, unless you find some that are under $5 (try Michael’s Craft Store or CVS sometimes sells cheap blank shirts too). You should stay away from buying pricey new shirts because first time printers do not always make perfect images, and you are likely to mess up the first few times you print with your new screen. You don’t want to invest a lot of money into a new blank shirt only to misprint it and get disappointed. Use a bunch of stuff you already have around the house first to practice on. Scraps of fabric, fun papers, and old skirts are some other ideas of things that would make great surfaces to print on.
Here are some fun ideas for screen printing to get your mind going and help you think of some things you may have around the house that you can print on:
*Print onto scraps of colorful old t-shirts, then cut your printed image out and appliqué it onto a pair of jeans or a tote bag.
*Find a skirt that has a light pattern (floral, plaid, etc.) and layer a screen print on top of it! Printing on already-printed fabrics gives your clothing a unique and unexpected look.
*Spruce up a boring old khaki trench coat with a screen print on the back of it!
*Make throw pillows featuring your screen prints.
*Try printing on those plain white cotton curtains that you are getting bored with…
*Do you have a shirt with a stain on it? Screenprint over your stain, and the shirt will look good as new!
*Are your bedsheets too plain? Screenprint a pattern onto them…
The possibilities are truly endless! Come up with some ideas of your own and be sure to jot them down so you can save them for Lesson 3 when we start to print.