Screen Printing For Beginners

[Mirtha Shikles]

1Decide on an image you want to print. For this tutorial I'm using a basic tree. For your first screen printing subject try something that's just a silhouette and one colour. Something like my tree or simple lettering is perfect.

2. Print your shape or letters onto a regular piece of paper. You can also print it on transparency paper but that's not necessary until you get to more detailed images. Carefully cut out the image with an Exacto knife.

When you get into more detailed images you'll want to invest in the transparency paper which you can buy on Amazon or at Staples. The image you print has to be OPAQUE because it needs to block all light from going through it.

If you're unsure as to whether it's dark enough, hold your image up to the light. If light comes through, it isn't dark enough. Either print another copy and double them up on top of each other, or colour in your paper with a black marker.

Now you need to grab your frame. A screen printing frame is a wood or metal frame with "silk" on it. The silk is actually polyester. I recommend you buy your screen and frame pre-made, but you CAN make your own by stapling "110" polyester mesh to a square wood frame.

(update: Since taking an advanced screen printing course I've learned you can also turn a fan on low pointed at the screen to speed the drying time. With a fan it will take around half an hour to dry)

Once the screen has dried you can now transfer the image you want to screen print onto it. THIS is where people usually get stuck because most tutorials recommend you use a lightbox. You DON'T NEED A LIGHTBOX.

The easiest way for you to expose the screen if you're just starting out is with a 150 watt lightbulb. This can be a regular 150 watt incandescent bulb or a 20 watt LED bulb which is the equivalent.

2. Carry your prepared screen over to your light area. Keep the screen covered with a towel to prevent light from hitting it until the second you're ready to expose it.

Because of the screen size my image required 35 minutes of exposure with a 150 watt lightbulb set to 18" away from the image. Yours may be different, but if your screen and image are around the same size as mine this exposure time and distance should work for you too.

7. Wash your screen with any high pressure tap. Your shower head or outdoor garden hose work well. Spray the screen with luke warm water focusing on the image area. Not hot, not cold.

Since this is your first time and maybe you don't have your technique down perfectly yet, plan to do a few test runs before. Practice over and over on an old tee shirt until you feel like you've got it under control. THEN move onto your real tee shirt.

Before printing, hold your screen up to a light source. If you see any pinholes where emulsion is missing from parts of the screen cover that area with a small piece of tape. Otherwise ink could seep through the hole and

Continue to ContentHow to Screen Print at HomePrep Time: 4 hours Active Time: 30 minutes Additional Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 5 hours Difficulty: IntermediateEstimated Cost: $55Screen Printing tutorial for the beginner.

About 12 years ago, my brother and I started our business in our mom's garage so we know a thing or two about screen printing at home. We've had our business for about 14 years now - growing it into a huge 15,000 SQ ft warehouse with 6 automatic screen printing machines and more.

Speaking from experience, if I could go back and start again, I don't think I would have attempted to screen print at home. If your goal is to make money with custom merchandising, printing it at home isn't the most profitable way to do it.

Screen printing at home requires a sizable investment and huge learning curve of getting semi-decent at printing your own t shirts that could take upwards of 6 months to a year. If you simply factored your own time at $20/hr, you'd find that your time is better invested in different aspects of your business.

The one aspect we think is a better time investment is learning how to market your business and the sales side of custom t shirt printing. There are thousands of customers actively looking to make their own t shirts in bulk and simply guiding them through the process can help yield tons of profitable results.

By focusing on the marketing and sales side, you can grow your business exponentially faster than the time it would take to simply learn the craft. Learning the craft takes trial and error. Learning to sell the project means instantly profiting.

So, how do you profit if you aren't doing the work? It's simply. You outsource it. There are thousands of professional screen printing and t shirt printing companies like mine, Garment Decor, that can print your wholesale bulk order for $.50 cents to the dollar that you could simply profit from.

Great entry, pretty explanatory!

I learnt how to screen print 4 or 5 years ago and did it a few times back in my home country but I wanted to restart in Canada, so my only question will be about the cleaning part, how do you do it and where to put all the stuff once you are done?

When I was younger than now I was a great enthusiast of photography and naturally I came across silk screen printing. I was so absorbed in it that even the emulsion i used to make it myself using pot bichromate and gelatin. It wasn't as sensitive as the bought one but it worked using sunlight as the light source.

Thanks for earthing up memories.

last winter I did some cyanotype printing on fabric...you paint the chemicals on the fabric (very low light, not total dark) but leave it to dry in darkness. I lack a closet to use, so used an old suitcase. I propped the lid just a bit, and put fabric over it...some air, but lots of dark. would sunshine work for exposure? I am sure the sun will be out again some day.

Great tutorial!

I have seen that most tutorials seem to forget mentioning the curing/setting of the screened ink after applied.

So as to set the ink on the garment to prevent it from washing out!

Do you iron or tumble dry?

Screen printing with vinyl has literally changed my life. Since starting DIY screen printing at home with my Cricut just a few years ago, I have launched a screen printing kit with Speedball that is carried by Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joanns, and Blick. I have also taught hundreds of people how to screen print at my live events, and thousands more with my Screen Printing for Beginners online course.

Like many of you, I started out making shirts for family and friends using HTV. I enjoyed creating shirts with HTV, but I always preferred wearing screen printed shirts. I also really hated how the vinyl would start peeling after only a few washes.

Screen printed shirts feel so much better and when done right, they will last wash after wash. For these reasons, I wanted to try screen printing but I thought it was too dangerous, complicated, and expensive to do in the comfort of my own craft room.

This article is written for beginners. If you have mastered the basics but need a little help working out some of the kinks in more complicated projects, check out my Screen Printing with a Press course.

Design and cut your vinyl with your vinyl cutter just like you always do, but use Oracal 651 outdoor vinyl instead of HTV. Oracal 651 is an adhesive vinyl that sticks to your screen. This helps keep it from peeling up during the screen printing process.

Place the frame face down on a firm surface and apply your vinyl design in the center of the mesh screen on the back side of the frame (the side that touches the shirt). Putting the design on the back of the screen is a little trick I developed to keep the vinyl from peeling up while pulling the squeegee over the design.

This is where screen printing becomes more economical (and time saving) than iron-on vinyl (HTV). HTV can get expensive when doing a bunch of shirts. With screen printing, you can reuse the same stencil over and over. I've been able to use the same screen to make 200+ shirts!

Wet screen printing ink is just like any other wet substance. It will soak through (bleeding) your shirt if you let it. Placing a piece of parchment paper inside the shirt will stop the ink from bleeding and messing up the backside of your garment.

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