Tools for DIY Screen Printing

Series Summary

Have you ever looked at the t-shirt designs at your local department store and thought, “I can do better than that!”? Have you ever been frustrated that you can't find any t-shirts with the name and logo of your favorite band or movie? The solution to these problems is to take matters into your own hands and start printing your own t-shirts. Then you can print whatever you want!

In this series of free crafts videos, our experienced screen printer takes you through all of the steps involved in creating a screen-printed t-shirt. Melina Piroso begins with on overview of screen printing basics, then discusses all of the steps involved in the process. Learn how to make a screen for your inks and a stencil with your own design. What kind of inks and fabrics should you use to get the best results? Melina answers these questions and more with a thorough discussion screen printing. She demonstrates how to apply the inks and then how to dry the shirt once it has been printed. Watch this series and you will learn a great way to customize your clothes and show off your creativity to the rest of the world!

Video Transcript

"I'm Melina and welcome to Expert Village. Today, I am going to show you how to make screen print design on a t-shirt. The first things that you are going to need a regular piece of paper, where you?re going to draw a design. You?re going to need waxy parchment paper, a piece of test fabric, a t-shirt that you want to put a screen print on. You?re going to need fabric screen printing paint, a squigy like device, drawing utensils, tape, iron, and of course a screen print box. You can make this yourself using very, very sturdy screen that has very tiny holes. You can usually buy this at an art store for about $20 or a whole screen printing set, which should come with everything that you need. Most art stores have them. You want to make sure that if you buy a screen print box and it comes made of wood, which most of them do. You want to make sure that you cover it with about two layers of duct tape. Make sure that one layer is going down about a half of an inch onto the screen. The reason that you want to do this is because if you keep using your print screen box and your using paint, eventually the paint will seep into the wood and it will rot. The first thing that you want to do is to cover the entire thing with duct tape. It doesn't look very pretty, but it works."