#screenprintingathome

Screen Printing: A Beginning 

Read our first post to follow our adventure from the beginning.

Today I discuss how things went, the processes we used, and what worked for us! (and what didn't...)

Following some great instruction from various sources online, we began by mixing up the photo emulsion with the sensitiser. Though I still have no actual explanation as to what it does, my thinking is that it actually readies the emulsion, making it sensitive to light, though I don't understand why it's not already mixed in? Maybe it makes the product more effective, or cheaper, who knows - I'm sure we'll find out in the future.

While that was settling - it says to wait an hour or two before using - we started on the screen.

The screen was perhaps the easiest bit! All we needed was an old canvas frame I had lying around, which I picked-up cheaply years ago. I removed the canvas carefully, and stapled on some old net curtain. The hardest bit is keeping the fabric, or mesh, as tight as possible all the way round when stapling, else the screen won't print correctly. It's much easier with two people, so I recommend getting some help if you can!

When the screen was ready and the photo emulsion had become properly acquainted with the sensitiser, I laid it out on my bed - for reasons that will become clear in a moment - on top of a bin bag, and slathered it onto the screen.

Now what's important to note here, and this is the reason it was done in my bedroom, is that the photo emulsion is of course sensitive to light, so it needs to be applied to the screen in the dark. It doesn't need to be pitch black, for which I'm grateful, because it was hard enough to see what I was doing as it was, but it does need to be as dark as possible. My bedroom has a blind behind a set of curtains, so it's perfect for this, even on a sunny day. A small gap on the side of the blind allowed just enough light to penetrate so I could actually see what I was doing.

After applying the emulsion, I let it dry before printing out my acetate 'template'. Once the emulsion had dried, I taped the template onto the screen, left it in the sun for an hour, and let the UV rays work their magic.

Now it's safe to say that my first attempt was a fail for various reasons;

I didn't attach the acetate template in reverse, so if it ever was to print, it would have been the mirror image - d'oh!

I didn't allow for the varying conditions of the Welsh weather, and the very inconsistent sunlight, meaning a longer exposure time was needed

The indirect sunlight meant the acetate itself cast shadows on the image, making it very unclear

I scrubbed way too hard when trying to remove the unexposed emulsion, because I thought I read it somewhere - I didn't. Whoops

Suffice to say, the first attempt was nothing but a learning experience, and here is the result, for context...

Only the darker section in the middle should be blue, the rest should be a clear white (the original colour of the old curtain) and inside the blue rectangle should be an exact copy of the acetate template I printed out, though as you can see, there's merely a lighter patch where I scrubbed too hard.

After re-reading advice online, and closely following the video I mentioned in our previous screen printing post, we finally succeeded in making the screen correctly, and here's the finished result!

I've made a few errors here too though, mainly that I used duct tape to secure the template, where I've since learned I should've used regular sticky tape to allow the light to pass through. Not a huge issue though, it just means I have to be more careful when printing!