Silkscreen SUCCESS!

Last night's attempt was a success. I think I found several small detailed hangups from previous attempts that I've corrected and made all the difference. Mainly you need some real pressure when spraying out the screen. I had a crummy dish sink hose.

Exposing the dry emulsion silkscreen to a 500 watt halogen work lamp (with removed UV filtering glass)

Using brown craft/mailing paper for testing. Giant roll of this for cheap at Staples.

Washed out image looks great on the screen.

 

Going to flood the screen with ink, then lay it down and pull a test.

Test image isn't too bad. The random spots of ink are from a previous test.

 

Now I'm using the nice black 11"x17" cardstock I ordered from PaperAndMore.com

 

Pulling ink, making some screen prints! My girlfriend said I have a ridiculous smile while doing this.

  I made a total of 16 Mega Hombre silkscreens

Some small labels I've stamped with the silkscreen title and my contact info for the backs

 

Front and back of a print.

 

I actually silkscreened the paper prints with acrylic titanium white ink. Hobby Lobby only carried Speedball Fabric Ink, so I improvised. Now I'm silkscreening a navy blue Mega Hombre shirt for myself, and drying the ink before I toss it in the oven to cure it.

 

Done! Not too bad, if I say so myself! It took a lot of attempts and learning, but it was worth it!

So now I'm going to attempt my other two designs as silkscreen prints, and a shirt each for the convention. I'm so ready for Spokane Comicon Saturday! See you there!

PS Im thinking I may write a tutorial covering everything I did, and list all the little details that I had to be aware of to get a proper screen.