Tuesday, May 28, 2013

T-Shirt Re-fashion with Easy Screen Printing


I finally got around picking up some speedball paint so I could use my ghetto screen printing hoop and hand me down shirt.  I found the paint on sale at Michaels for $3.99.  I had a cool grey shirt at home and I new the orange would look cool on it.  I drew this design below a while back.  


 To make your own ghetto screen, you just need a quilt hoop, sheer fabric, a pencil, mod podge, screen printing ink, and a ton of patience.  First trace your image onto the fabric in pencil.  Then paint glue around all the spaces where you do not want ink.  Leave the places you want the ink to print through free from glue.  Be sure not to paint the glue onto the screen when it is resting on something.  You have to rest the screen on blocks or hold it in your hand so the glue doesn't go through and stick to the surface underneath.

Once the screen is dry you can get ready to print the shirt.  I put a block of foam inside the shirt.  Set the hoop on top of the shirt where I wanted the design.  I just used an old credit card to swipe the ink across the screen several times, making sure to hold the screen down, so it doesn't smudge.

Here is how it came out.  The sheer fabric I used is really grainy and uneven, so it gives it a different effect.  I obviously missed a few spots with the glue.  I like the look regardless.



There is some irony to this shirt .... I wore it while I was cleaning the house the other day.  I was cleaning the tub and when I came up from scrubbing there was orange ink all over my pants!  I freaked out thinking it was going to permanently stain my favorite pair of cords.  It washed off fine.  I started thinking maybe I didn't set the ink well enough with the iron (always a good idea to either flash dry it in the dryer once the ink is dry or iron it once it's dry to permanently set it in to the fabric).  I go look at the tube of paint to see what the instructions say and I see on the front that it is WATER SOLUBLE block ink.  D'oh!!!!  Totally didn't read that when I picked it up!  


Give me a break!



I was able to wash out the design from the shirt and the beauty of using the mod podge screen vs. the freezer paper style of ghetto screen printing is that I can just reuse the same hoop and screen, so all I need to do is by FABRIC screen printing ink, grab my shirt, block of foam, an old credit card, and I can recreate this shirt all over again.  This time permanently.  

Erinn ~ Sticky Genius



3 comments:

Sandy said...

Oh no, you must have been gutted. but it is great! now if the fabric paint comes in that colour!
I guess it makes a good heads up for the rest of us.

I think you can get a textile paint extender which you can add to things like artists acrylic to make them permanent on fabric. I have some and have heard about it, but haven't tried it yet.
Sandy in the UK

Unknown said...

Such a cool idea. I'm glad it worked out in the end :-)

Eddie, EOD

Come over and ‘like’ Eddie's Room on Facebook for some crafty ideas and conversation. :-)

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