What is Screen Printing?
Screen Printing is the art of taking a design and transferring ink through a mesh screen, printing onto various substrates such as a fabric, t-shirts, paper or card. It's much easier than you'd think and it's really simple to pick up and give it a go.
Unleashing your creativity
The best thing about Screen Printing is it's universal - anyone from anywhere can try it, there is no entry barrier. People Screen Print for many different reasons, whether it be starting their own business, a passion project or a way to create personalised gifts.
How do I get started?
The best place to start is by picking up one of our Screen Printing Kits. We’ve neatly organised our kits into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced - so you have a great place to start. All our kits come with a meshed screen, squeegee as standard. Find out more about Screen Printing Mesh here.
The Three Simple Steps ✨
1) The Design
Stencil Printing
When it comes to stencil printing, It's as simple as it looks. It's a shape cut out of paper. Make it as complex or simple as you like, but we'd recommend starting with a simple shape, the outline of an animal, a number, whatever - but really you can be as creative as you like here! If you would like to speed up the process, check out our blog 'Create Stencils with a Cutting Machine & Yupo Paper'
Exposed Screens
Exposed Screens are much more varied and allow for much more creative expression. Have an image you want to print? A scanned drawing? A company logo? It’s all possible with our Custom Exposed Screen Service, the key part of this process is following the Artwork Preparation Guide.
2) Screen Prepation
Next up is preparing! Luckily all our Screens and Screen Printing Kits include pre-meshed screens, so first of all, decide how and where you'll be screen printing and general setup, are you printing on a table? Have access to a wash-up area?
The fun part next - deciding your ink and colours! Printing onto darker fabrics? Use our Super Opaque Waterbased Inks! We have a wide range of inks from Metallics, Fluorescents and Pastels.
3) Printing
Flood
After applying your ink to the screen, next you’ll need to flood the screen. Simply apply little pressure to the squeegee and coat the entire surface of the screen. This helps ensure the mesh on the screen is filled with ink, creating an even layer and preventing any gaps or uneven ink coverage.
Pull
Finally, with a firm and consistent pressure use the squeegee to pull the ink across the screen. Depending on how many screens/layers of colour, this is repeated until you have the final result! Don’t forget to heat cure the print! Read more here on heat curing.
It's that simple ✨
So whether you are just looking to pick up a new hobby, create fun new artwork or even start your own T-Shirt business - screen printing is for you.
