screen print t-shirts hey i'm bob, at i like to make stuff. today i'm going to show you how to screen print your own t-shirts. you're going to need a screen, a squeegee, and some photo emulsion.
wood branding iron material, this stuff comes in 2 parts. you're going to add a little water to the little bottle of sensitizer, and mix it up. that loosens it from the sides of the bottle, and then you can pour it into the emulsion. then you're going to mix that all together really, really well, until it's a consistent green color.
it might take a little while, but you want to make sure that you get it fully consistent. once you have it, you pour a little bit of it onto the screen. you don't need to use very much because it spreads really thin once you use the squeegee. make sure to get the entire thing covered where you're art is going to be and make sure it's really, really even now, don't leave this out in the light. put a fan on it to dry and turn the lights off. you want it to dry in the dark. once it's dry you do want to work quickly because this stuff is photosensitive,
so the longer the light's on it, the quicker it's going to set. print out your art on some transparencies, and you can do this at any office supplies store, and then lay them backward on the back of the screen. lay a piece of glass over them to push them down against the screen, and then set a really bright light on top of it for about 3-45 minutes. so, while we're waiting on that, i want to tell you about this. in this box is a queen-size mattress. unbelievably it fits in this box. it's made by a company called casper, and it's a combination of memory and latex foam
and they squish it down into a bag-- stick it in this box. they ship it to you, you take a tool, and you rip open the bag, and the whole mattress just inflates. if you want to watch here, you can see a video about me making a king-size bed and on that bed we use a casper mattress. so i've been sleeping on it since i made that video, and i can honestly say that i really love the mattress. super comfortable, i recommend them all the time when people ask my if i actually like them or not because i really do.
the cool thing is you get to sleep on it for 100 nights and if you don't like it for any reason, they'll come get it. so if you are looking for a mattress, i definitely suggest checking this out go to casper.com. you can use the code "make" and that'll get you $50 off anything you order which is pretty awesome. so, go check 'em out. thanks to casper for sponsoring this video. let's get back to the printing. the light exposes and hardens the emulsion that is not covered by the design, so you can see the lighter green stuff here didn't get exposed.
you can use a light spray and a soft toothbrush to help remove this area. the way printing works is that the green area acts as a mask. the white--or lighter area--lets the ink through onto the surface that you're printing on. you want to do this gently, because you don't want to remove anything that you actually need this may take a little bit of time, and sometimes you may have mistakes. if you have areas that are mistakes, or stuff you don't want to print yet, you can use some tape to cover them up. use painter's tape and not duct tape -- the duct tape will rip off the emulsion. -now lay out your shirt and place your screen, then add a nice thick be bead of the screen printing ink it's best to have somebody else hold your screen and then pull the squeegee down across your print
if you click here you can see one of my first videos on this channel was how to make a four color printing press, this makes this process- a lot easier but it's really exactly the same you hook- in the screen line it up with your center line and then you can get repeatable nice prints- on multiple shirts you lay your shirt out in the same way, and then use the machine to hold the screen down in placeyou still pull it the same way and get just about the same results you want to heat set these by throwing them in the dryer for a few minutes you can reuse the screens too if you're finished with them by putting some photo emulsion remover on them this is a simple solution that you can just kind of wipe on with a paper towel or a toothbrush
make sure you put it on both sides and it doesn't have to stay on longer than a couple of minutes then you can use a hose to wash out all of the emulsion if you use dark ink sometimes it will stain the screen itself but you can still reprint through them- as long as the emulsion is gone now it takes a little bit of practice, when you do this you may end up having some bad shirts it takes a little while to get the feel of how hard you need to push down the squeegee and how to do it evenly because you want to make sure you get a really even pull, so that the- ink is spread evenly through the screen so it's best to find some old t-shirts to practice on
before you try and use like your nice shirts that you purchased for this. now screen printing works on all sorts of things textiles, so any type of t-shirt, canvas, bag, aprons, even hats- if you can work on the shape of the hat.all sorts of stuff like that, any type of clothing works really really well. just make sure to heat set it into the clothing just like i showed you you can also print on paper if you wanted to make posters or invitations, things like that, paper works really well. i've also printed on wood several times you can watch my long board video where here where i screen printed my logo on it that was really easy
to do i've done it for several clients to put their logo on things that i've made -and it works surprisingly welland i've also done it on metal you just have to make sure you put some sort of a clear coat over it it to protect it because it will scrape off the metal pretty easily as long as you clear coat it you should be good to go so if you're interested in printing i'm going to have a link below to my site which will have a list of all the stuff i used and links for you to find everything you need so you can print on your own i hope you like this project and if you did let me know down in the comments below or at iliketomakestuff.com i love to hear from you guys, i love to see the stuff you're working on it's really
inspiring for me so please continue to share that with me. you can find me on all of the social networks, which ever one you like the best, i'm probably there. i have a lot more stuff for you to check out in podcast and shows and all sorts of stuff and if you want to help support these videos, patreon is the best way to do that you can click here you can click here -and find out all about that.thanks for watching guys, thanks to casper for sponsoring this video and i'll see you next time.
