My Life on the Net

I looked all weekend for a basic screen printing kit. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and not just pay cafepress a fee to print my ideas onto a t-shirt. I want to MAKE it. I’m sure most people will understand that.

No art store seemed to have the photo-sensitive paint I was looking for - unless it was in a kit that was too expensive for me to afford. I didn’t want to spend £30 just on a small bottle of paint and a whole load of useless tools.

It’s a surprise what you can do with the stuff you have around you. All I had was some cotton mesh, some glue, fabric paint, drawing pins and an old picture frame. All that I needed.

The Tools of the Trade (and my feet)

It’s a surprisingly basic technique:

• Stretch and pin the cotton mesh onto the back of the picture frame.
• Draw the design.
• Brush on the glue into the negative parts of the design (e.g. the bits you don’t want to get paint going through).
• Wait to dry.
• Place the design onto the medium.
• Scrape the paint through the mesh onto the medium.
• Take off and wash.
• Enjoy your new screen print!

The tester print. It seemed to work pretty well although I didn’t get the paint as through as I would have liked.

Unfortunately, the final print on the t-shirt didn’t go as well as I had hoped - and some of the screen had come off. It still works I think - but next time I need to remember to apply the glue a little thicker.

I think it went well, and it’s not bad for a first attempt. I’m going to spend some time perfecting the screen and design (this one only took a couple of minutes) and hopefully it’ll look even better.

What do you think as a first attempt?