Print Options Available For Personalised T-Shirt Printing

Screen printing began about five years ago when I first started to make my hand-printed Bonbi Forest T-shirts and accessories. I started by stenciling my designs that were rather time-consuming, though beautiful. A better way had to be there! I wanted to go to screen printing, and I taught myself at home with a bit of trial and error.

I now have a modern heat setting system and use image emulsion stencil-making methods five years and thousands of tees ago, but I still use quite a rustic set-up for my printing. For this tutorial, I wanted to show how to screen-print short runs of a personalised t shirts australia design with just a camera, a squeegee, some paint, a piece of paper and a craft knife can be done very easily at home. It's how I began, and if you like it, you've got the basics to begin experimenting with more advanced ways to make stencils.

What you need:

Here is the list of heading that you need

  1. Screen printing fabric ink:
  2. A screen:
  3. A squeegee:
  4. How much will it cost?:
  5. What to do:
  • Screen printing fabric ink:

Try to start with a ready-mixed ink, like the Speedball range. To ensure that your design is washable, follow the instructions on the ink.

  • A screen:

You can purchase these ready-made (which can be very expensive) or buy the mesh and a cheap canvas stretcher frame and make your own by spreading the mesh across the frame and stapling uniformly at the edges so it's taut like a drum. For general printing, 43 T mesh is the highest.

  • A squeegee:

Many hardware stores that sell screen print supplies will purchase this. I have always used a D-Cut blade for printing on paper, but a square-edged blade is also fine. (If you just want to print a hit, a hard piece of plastic or a very tough, a thick sheet, as long as the edge is very straight and solid

 

  • How much will it cost?:

A scratch (mesh, staples, frame) A4 screen plus ink and a squeegee would set you back around £ 25. It sounds a lot, but a well looked-after screen and squeegee will last a long time if you want to do more printing.

What to do:

  1. Come up with a design that you can cut with a craft knife easily out of the paper. It can be very effective to design simple shapes such as triangles or diamonds in a circle or dispersed randomly. Cut off your design.
  2. Take your screen and cover it around the edges of the underside (the side that is going to be in contact with the fabric), so that when you place your stencil paper on top there is no mesh showing around the edges-you don't want paint to crawl across the edges of your stencil. But don't tape the mesh with your stencil!
  3. Place your flat printed t shirts or fabric and place the stencil of paper on it where you want your model. Place the screen on top, make sure that the paper is not moved and that the screen is centered around it.
  4. Blob a tablespoon of ink in a row at your screen's top edge.
  5. Hold the screen firmly with one hand, place the squeegee above the ink and pull it down the screen by applying some pressure, taking the ink with it (pull at an angle of 45o for a square blade and upright for D-cut). Repeat, then put on one side of the squeegee, be careful not to spill excess ink.
  6. With one hand holding down the fabric, lift the screen from the bottom edge and then away. Voila, voila! Look forward to your project.
  7. You will note that the stencil of paper sticks with the ink to the window. At this stage, it is important that you make your next prints quickly and if you notice the ink starting to look drier, you must immediately wash the screen-once water-based ink is dry on the screen, it is impossible to get out.
  8. When the print run is over, remove the stencil of paper and clean the screen with cold water. Use a sponge or nylon washing-up brush to clean it gently and make sure you get all the plastic. Until printing again, leave the screen air-dry.

Suggestions:

Before printing on your ' done ' surface, always do a test print.

When the screen is cleaned, paper stencils will need to be discarded, so if you want to do a lot of the same print, make many stencils for further printing sessions at once.