Screen Printing at Home

I love learning new skills and being able to do things myself. I love when my hands are covered in paint after working on a new piece! It’s just all very satisfying. So over Christmas last year I taught myself how to screenprint. Now I did not use the emulsion process (though I’m hoping to try that soon), rather I created a vinyl stencil with my Silhouette Machine. Since I have to create a new vinyl stencil each time I want to print the setup process can feel a bit long. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to cut the vinyl, peel the stencil out, transfer it onto the frame and cover the edges with painter’s tape. Also, I make mistakes regularly so that probably makes the process longer as well.

One of the mistakes I’ve made is choosing to start printing things with my cat in the room. At one point I had just printed several shirts and left them to dry on the kitchen table. Once I walked away my cat hopped up on the table and got some nice little cat paw prints on two crewnecks! So this last time I printed I moved my set up into the garage where I could make a mess without any worries and where no cats would be able to mess with my work.

I’ve only screen printed with a vinyl stencil and my biggest frustration with it is how unpredictable it can be. It took me about 20 minutes to transfer my stencil onto the wooden frame when I printed in the garage. This usually takes me about 2 minutes, but the vinyl wanted to stick to all the wrong things. Once I had finally applied it to the screen I realized there were lots of bubbles connected to letters. This can be an issue because if the vinyl does not fully stick to the screen ink can fill up that bubble. Not what we are looking for. At this point I was so frustrated I just wanted to see what would happen. So I laid the frame down on a crew neck, spread the ink across the top, and spread it across the screen. Holding my breath I pulled the frame up and to my surprise the design was perfect! I then risked it and printed seven more shirts, each looking great! So in the below pictures you’ll see I’m smiling big, and that is the smile of someone who was shocked things went so smoothly!

All of the supplies I used can be found in my Favorite Things Blog!