Screen Printing

 Last night  I went to a screen printing class with the Red Hot Arts Center ~ and it was heaps of fun. I really liked how the folks there came up with their designs for their shirt. This is my design to throw on my shirt-just a face of a girl.

 This was a great intricate design that has the text 'seed'. I think that it's cute because it has a shape of a seed/waterdrop with roots and the signs of a growing plant from the top. It's great artwork to put on a shirt - and she made two of them! It's going to be a great couple shirt.

This was such a cute creation of a cat! Big eyes, ears and whiskers with a long tail make it so adoreable! I love cartoons that are out of proportion - they make them seem less harmful. Like I'm terrified of spiders, but when I see a big cartoon of one, I'm fine with it. I almost cried out of fear when I saw the trailer for 8 legged freaks. (yeah I'm weak)

This design was supposed to go with the cartoon cat following behind it! I think that it would've been fine by itself in a repetitive pattern on a part of the shirt! Maybe if the pattern was just on the hem all around the shirt, or just on the sleeves - I recon it would look good

 Ok, here's also a little method of how to make your own screen printed shirt. (And its much better than the iron on - it stays on longer!). You first make your image like a stencil. I went for using the lines that made up my image to be where the color will go onto my shirt. You just have to remember that as a stencil - everything needs to connect so that the image will hold up while it's getting printed (but I think you'll be fine because the paper will be squished down)

Then you slice out your stencil image - Remember to use a cutting board and a sharp knife to cut it out! With a design like mine it did take a while to try to cut out.

What you do now is find yourself a shirt and pop a board inside it. Set up the shirt so that the part which you want to print is facing up towards you. The board is there to provide a good base and to prevent any excess ink bleeding into the back of the shirt.

 This is where you'll need some equipment. You'll need a screen to make this work (in this Screen printing article it'll tell you how to make a screen at home). You place your stencil image onto the shirt and then lay the screen over your stencil. You get some fabric paint and 'blob' it on one end of the stencil. You can mix the paint to create a cool color mix (shown above).

 You then grab a 'squidgy' - a piece of flat something (wood, plastic, rubber etc.) to evenly spread the paint along the pattern to the other end of the screen.

 Then you hold your squidgey at a high angle and press the paint with even pressure all the way to the other end of the screen (didn't I just say this before?)

 And you just do it again - just the other way

Then life up the screen, then the stencil image (if it didn't stick to the screen) and let your shirt paint dry out. Then you have to follow the instructions on the pot of fabric paint you got - I left that bit up to the teacher. But he said you can do it with a real hot industrial dryer!

From all that work you get a top that noone else will have and you can show your creativity on a regular basis!