Excellent tutorial on home screen printing at no media kings.

The ultimate DIY screenprinting at Instructables using old frames, curtains, the sun and a garden hose.

This one is how to make a multi-colored poster – a lot of steps, and using professional equipment, although you could improvise.

Basic instructions at Reuls for using speedball products.

This is what it looked like around here this weekend. I have turned the dining room into a small factory for knitting needle cases.

Why is it that Christmas always comes at the end of term? It leads to a lot of stress, trying to finish crafts and papers at the same time!

I have been working on these knitting needle cases for awhile now, and finally got them all finished up.

It was fun to pick out the fabrics for these, I think the colors turned out nice. I wanted to make lots more so I would have an excuse to buy more cute fabric, but they take awhile to make so I though I better restrain myself for now. They are all up in my shop.

Also, for those of you who are concerned that I have abandoned my dress for more exciting, less obnoxious projects, don’t worry, I am still battling it out. I think victory may soon be at hand, as I have installed the zipper and so far it seems to fit!

This is my most recent bag creation, using some screen prints that I did last summer. We kept calling this image the wee turtles because they are so cute and the lines are so delicate.

I have been thinking lately about setting up a little shop off the side of this site so that I have a place to direct all my excess crafting production. The thing about screen printing is, it really seems silly to only print one of something, but I don’t know what to do with the rest of them. But it’s taking me a while to get that set up, so if anyone is interested in buying one of these bags, please email me and we can work something out. I may also be interested in a swap, depending on what you’d be interested in swapping for.

Also, someone asked me about doing a tutorial for how I make my bags. There are already some good tutorials out there, like Mariko’s and the Jordy tutorial on craftster, so if you’re interested in learning to make bags, I would start there.

Three handbags:

This one has silkscreened origami cranes. I wrestled with the zipper quite a bit, so I was quite pleased that it turned out well in the end.

And a denim and silk one.

And this one, with a silkscreened bike and rainbow plaid.

Here are some of the products of our screen printing labours. Completed at about 1 a.m the night before we flew home for the holidays, incidentally. We had to burn the screen twice before it would take, so we were a bit pressed for time for the printing. But, despite the sleep-deprived working conditions, they turned out pretty well, made with lovely American Apparel shirts, and we gave one to each of Ian’s brothers and his dad. Now to make some for ourselves.

And yes, that is Tommy Douglas again.

My attempt to burn a new screen on the weekend was a sucesss… at least it was the second time I tried it. The first time I think there was a combination of too thick a layer of emulsion on the screen and not enough exposure time. All the emulsion on the edges of the screen washed out. I was very sad, but tried again, with a more even coat of emulsion, a raised lamp and longer exposure time. Although we left it the first time for the recommended hour and half, our screen is quite large, so the second time, with a higher lamp, we waited two and a half hours. Next time I buy emulsion I am definitely going to put more time into finding somewhere that sells Autosol XL instead of the Diazo, because I think it has much shorter exposure times. Coating the screen evenly with the emulsion was definitely the hardest part of the whole process, and the messiest. But it was easier even the second time, so I’m sure it just takes some practice.

This is the set up we rigged up for exposure, classy, I know:

But really easy. All you need is a 150 watt bulb, some way to suspend it above your screen, and a piece of glass to hold your images flat to your screen. There isn’t a glass place near our house, so I bought an old picture from the Goodwill and threw the frame away. I used computer printed transparencies for my images, doubled up so they would be opaque, and just taped them in place to the screen.

This experience should prove that if I can do this, anyone can.

Yesterday I had my first print run on the silkscreen by myself, without someone to help fix all my mistakes. It was fairly successful.

Check out our set-up. Anyone who does professional silk screening would probably be appalled, but it worked, so that’s all that counts to me. The best part is the clamp system we rigged up. I couldn’t find the real clamps anywhere, and you have to drill holes in your table to mount them. I didn’t want to drill holes in my kitchen table, so we rigged this up with some $2 clamps and a set of door hinges. The only drawback was that the screen only opened to about 75 degrees, so it was a bit harder to position the fabric, but not too bad.

What was I printing? Like everything I am working on now, I can’t say until Christmas, but there will be lots to show after everyone opens their presents.

I cleaned the emulsion from the screen today, the next step is to try to expose a new screen on our own. It should be….an adventure.

If you are interested in trying to screen print, there are a couple of sites with okay instructions, like here. It can seem intimidating at first, but its really not as hard as it seems. People also seem to like the Print Gocco, which is a screen printing kit that comes with everything you need. Either way, its a bit of an investment at first, but well worth it.

The summer before last, I was really excited about learning to screen print. I went out and dropped some serious cash on all the supplies, and then stuck them in a closet for a year. During that year I secretly ogled the work of people more dedicated than I who actually USED their screens to print things. Then this summer, we finally did some printing (with the help of our excellent friend Jen). At some point, I will put up some instructions for how we did that .

In the meantime, smoking lily, from Victoria BC makes beautiful shirts and bags. You cannot walk a block in Vancouver without seeing someone wearing a smoking lily shirt, I swear. I particularly like their velvet messenger bags, which unfortunately they don’t have on their website. Not that I could afford to buy one, but…..

Also, from Anacortes, Washington is slow loris. She makes great printed shirts with original drawings. Like this: