screen printing: part 2

Hello, dearest readers!

I have a few more screen printing pictures for you today.

The next step is called emulsion. To prepare the screens, they have to be coated with a thick emulsion fluid that blocks the holes in the screen so no ink can get through during the printing process. 

This is what my screen looked like with the fluid on it. 

Now, let the emulsion fluid set in overnight by keeping the screen in a dark place. Light exposes it and I don't want that to happen except on the parts where the design will be.

This is the screen the next day after being in a dark cupboard for a 24 hours. :)

Next, it's time to expose the screen! You place your design inside the exposure machine . . . 

. . . then place your screen in over it, close the lid, and turn on the vacuum mode to suction the screen and the design close together. Then you run the exposure mode for a minute and 15 seconds before taking it out.

The machine sounds kind of like a spaceship while it's going (I wish I had taken a video now!)

When you've finished exposing, you rinse the screen to get off the exposed emulsion. This should leave the screen clear in the area where your design is so ink will come through only on the areas of your design. 

I would have taken pictures of this, but here's the problem: the emulsion fluid we were using did not work for some reason. We're thinking it might have been too old, unfortunately. So sadly, I have to redo the steps I took in this list! It's not a big deal, though, and I hope to have some more pictures next week. I'm actually rather pleased because I have some posts ready to go in the next few weeks-Rae kindly tagged me in a blog award, so I'll be doing that soon, and I have another drawing I did for my Jane Eyre project to share at some point. I'm excited to share them with you! Thanks for reading!

screen printing: part 1

Hello lovely readers!

Sorry about the radio silence over here last week. . . I have no excuse other than that I've been busy, but I'm back this week to talk about another project my design class is doing: screen printing. We're designing and printing our own t-shirts! I finished my design this week and have some process pictures to show you. 

Step 1: the design itself! I used one of my favorite quotes from Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. It's my favorite Shakespeare play and I absolutely adore this line in particular. Beatrice is such a fantastic character!

I wanted to do a flower wreath but could only do two colors (because the difficulty of screen printing increases with each additional color in a design), so this is what I finally came up with. 

Step 2: I created two separate documents, one for each color and put the corresponding design elements into each one, then converted them to black and white. Then I printed them out separately (on Special Paper!)

Step 3: Combining the designs. I had to fiddle with them a bit to line them up the way I wanted, and here's the result!

Stay tuned for more in the epic screen printing saga!