Screen Printing Tutorial

** Sorry about the formatting issues. I'm working on fixing it **

About a week or so ago I attempted screen printing at home with supplies I had around the house. It worked out great and I had some requests for a tutorial... so here it is. I was screen printing small scale images.

Materials:

To make screen
Open wood frame - needs to be able to support you stapling into it - so a thicker one is best. I bought mine from the dollar store for this tutorial so that I didn't have to use another one of my nice frames)
Lightweight fabric - I used organza because it was a tighter weave, but you could still see through it.
Staple gun and staples
Scissors
Packing tape
Mod Podge
Paint Brush
Image
Pen

To Screen Print
Homemade screen
Acrylic paint
Rubber Spatula
Baby wipes
Something to print on (I am using a knit fabric in this tutorial)

Step 1: Cut your fabric for the screen to size (I cut it about two inches larger than my frame. This accounted for the thickness of the frame and for some fabric to fold over).

Step 2: You can start where ever you want, the first time I started in the middle on the edge... the second time I tried starting with the corners. Both worked well as long as you are pulling them tight.

Lay your frame upside down on top of your fabric. Fold one edge (or corner) over the back of the frame and staple in place. The first few corners or sides are the easiest.

I fold the fabric over before stapling so that the fabric holds. Many fabrics (such as organza) will unravel in a single layer. By folding it, you will be able to pull the fabric tight without it coming loose.

Step 3: Repeat this process on the other sides and corners. You will want to be sure to do one side, then the opposite side to ensure a tight screen. The tighter the screen, the better print result you will get.

You will want the staples to be fairly close together. I am using a 5x7 frame and have 4 on each side and one in each corner. Notice that my frame was hard and the staples didn't go all the way in. I could hammer them in further, but it works just fine the way it is.

Step 4: With your packing tape, you will want to seal the inside edges so that paint doesn't seep out. Note: this tape may need to be reapplied each time you wash your screen as water will separate the screen from the adhesive.

When placing the tape, make sure that half of it is on the screen and half of it is on the frame.

The frame is complete! Now to add your image...

Step5: Take your image and put it on the inside of your frame.

Step 6: Draw around the image lines with a pencil or pen (whatever works best for you, it doesn't really matter as long as you can see it).

Be sure to draw around the image line, not just the line itself.

Step 7: Using Mod Podge and a brush, paint all the open areas where you do not want ink to print. You will be leaving the image area open so that paint is allowed through. The Mod Podge will block the paint from going through the other areas.

This may take more than one pass to ensure that you don't have any pin holes. Allow to dry - several hours.

Your screen is complete and ready for printing once it is dry!

Step 8: Be sure to screen print on a flat, hard surface. I use my tile kitchen counter. Place the item you are printing on under the screen and position it.

This is when you find that it is important that you picked a fabric you can see through.

Step 9: Put a line of paint at the top of the screen. My image was small and it doesn't take a lot of paint. I put a little more than I needed for one pass... but I was also planning on printing several.

Step 10: With your rubber spatula, press firmly down and push the paint over the image. You will only want to do one pass so it is important that your rubber spatula is wide enough to cover the entire image. You can use the side of it if necessary.

Step 11: Slowly separate the screen from the item you printed... and that's all there is to it! To make multiple prints, I wipe the bottom. If you were pressing firmly, there shouldn't have been any ink seeping, but I like to be safe.

To wash the screen, I use baby wipes rather than running it under the sink. This will save your packing tape just a little longer. After a few washings though, you will want to replace the tape.

The wipes also make for each and quick clean up so that you can do more than one color.

You'll notice a few things on the ones I made. The pink one - is a pig and apparently I forgot to check for pin holes... my son and I decided it was fine though because who doesn't love a freckled pig!

Also, the white chick has a wide beak from paint bleeding under the screen. This is what happens if you don't press firmly. For our purposes... even the ones that we messed up on, worked out great. This process is a lot of fun... I hope you have fun with it as well!