Mousch's Silk Screening Tutorial EXTRAVAGANZA! [56k has to go naked]

[mousch]

Well. You all know I love to post pictures of my snake. But my other super secret hobby is... silk screening! Like, onto clothes! I silk screen t-shirts in my spare time, when I have good ideas. My method is cheap and quick 'n dirty. It's pretty great, though, as far as I'm concerned so I figured I would share it with you crafty types out there to have some fun with!

Okay. First things first.

Materials
-Scissors
-Sheer (A very thin fabric. You can see through it. It's about $1.50/m at Wal-Mart)
-Ballpoint Pen
-Embroidery hoop: preferably thick. This keeps the sheer taut.
-Glue. I use Quick-Dry Tacky Glue, to reduce drying time because I am impatient
-Brushes. Get them at the dollar store, they are going to be abused.
-Silk Screening paint. I have tried two brands: Tulip and Speedball. Tulip is cheap but you need to use layers. Speedball is a special kind of happiness when used on fabric it's well worth the money but it WILL cost you money! That bottle of white (it's a BIG bottle and will last forever) Cost $35CDN!
-An idea for a shirt. HARDEST PART!!!


Look at all that craft stuff!

Step One - Create the Stencil
Put the sheer into the embroidery hoop and make sure it is taut. If the sheer is in too loose, your finished stencil will pucker and look really bad on your shirt! And that is just a waste of a good shirt my friends. Get that bugger tight on there. Pull and twist and use your fingers!


Now place your embroidery hoop on your design. Tape it down with masking tape if need be to keep it from wiggling. Trace it with the ballpoint pen. Don't use a felt tip, it bleeds and makes a mess and sucks.


Now you're tempted to feel proud of yourself already. Keep these endorphins, the next step might hurt your back...

Step Two: "Glue" your Stencil

Open up the glue, pour a bunch on some newspaper. Set the embroidery hoop down so that the sheer is NOT against the newspaper. This allows you to paint without your stencil getting stuck to your newspaper, and ensures that you will have glue blobs on the top of your stencil, not the bottom where they can mess up your lovely shirt! "Paint" the glue on anywhere you don't want the screen printing ink to go. Do this carefully, and try to be precise. You cannot be perfect with this method though. I like that it makes your shirts obviously handmade.


look now you feel like an artist!

Step Three: Painting the shirt!
The most rewarding part... to come tomorrow morning once I put paint to t-shirt! I know you all love to wait

In the meantime, here are some other shirts I have printed:


For my boyfriend, this is a Penny Arcade reference




Katamari Damacy!


Reservoir Dogs!

[mousch]

STEP FIVE: Putting brush to fabric

Get a piece of cardboard, and put it inside the shirt where you want the paint to be. This keeps it from bleeding through to the back, which would just look silly. Fold the shirt around this cardboard.

Place the stencil on top and pin it down. This prevents shaking and smudging your print!



Now doesn't that look exciting? It is exciting! Crack open your paint, and brush it on. You have to push down to make sure that the paint gets through the screen.



Look look! It's done it's done! Carefully remove the pins and pull the screen off slowly, making sure the fabric doesn' fold or pucker and get wet paint all over the place.


Now hang it up to dry! When the paint is dry (5-6hours) it's a good idea to put it in the dryer on hot for about half an hour. This helps to set the paint, but this step is not necessary - you can now wear your shirt and wash it and go out with pride to say "Oh, this? I made it myself!"

[Nate]

LOL that is some really cool stuff thank you for sharing!

[mousch]

LOL that is some really cool stuff thank you for sharing!

I hope that some people try it. I was really scared when I started, but now I absolutely LOVE it. There's a lot of concentration and time involved in making the stencil, so it's cool to go out and have people complement my shirt. It's very neat to put something you created out there and see it make someone smile

[Ginevive]

I bet you could make money doing that on ebay! Make obscure, weird, oddball shirts; people would eat them up!

[mousch]

This shirt is my second comission; the other was a request that I make a second run of this shirt:


This is the shirt of which the most exist: three. My method is bad for making multiple copies, that's part of the fun of it but when somebody wants one for themselves I get to start from scratch
I will do comissions though, this shirt was a joint effort between myself and a friend. Within the realm of possibility, I can do that but putting up L@@K WILL TO SINGLE RUN SCREEN PRINTING COMISSIONS on ebay doesn't get too many people excited.