The very talented Jennie showed me her great way to make screenprinted t-shirts! We are giving them to our housewarming party guests (while supplies last) this weekend. hint hint.I dug up some deals on t-shirts at the thrift store-local classic: The Village Discount-and Jennie prepared some screens and came up with a fun design, inspired by last week's bomb threat on our block. The design includes a teddy bear about to be blown up with the caption: "The Lakehouse 2010...it's dynamite!" Not kidding about the bomb threat, read the previous posts.
The screenprinting process includes a little work before the actual printing on t-shirts happens. In short, you prepare a special screen with photo emulsion- Jennie keeps her emulsion next to the ketchup.
Then you print out your design onto a special acetate sheet. Or you can draw directly onto the sheet using a sharpie. The acetate film is placed on the silkscreen and a big light etches in the design. How's that for articulate?! That is about as detailed as you'll get on that end of the process from me.Then we mixed up some fabric ink, placed a t-shirt (with protective board slipped inside to prevent ink bleeding through shirt) onto a table and inked up the screen!
It also involves a really fun squeegie (who doesn't love the squeegie tool?) and, in this screenprinting session, it involved help from my friends, Bob and Georg, visiting from Austria. It was truly an international peace effort. Notice the ethnic tensions in this photo below.
Silkscreening...keeping kids off the street and hipsters employed!
