Screen printing with photo emulsion

[Shogun]

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Speedball-Diazo-Photo-Emulsion-Kit/dp/B0007ZHGWI]Amazon.com: Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion Kit: Arts, Crafts & Sewing[/ame]

I've been playing around with this. Previously, I tried the sheets that already had the emulsion on them... didn't work out too well. Anyone else try their hand at silk screening prints using the photo emulsion method?

I tried to just carve a stencil that I could use over and over but the detail was just horrible.

 

[freedombecki]

Shogun, don't give up on your screenmaking. I took a design class in which we made a small screenprint, and it wasn't easy and didn't come out as expected. The prof at the time just advised us to practice, but I didn't have the right equipment and materials to do it with. The secret is practice and having a sense of humor when things don't go well. Stick to it, you'll catch on. Surely there are some good process books out there. It wouldn't hurt to revisit a college campus and ask who might direct you to the right book. Wish I had done a little more with it when I was on campus, but there was too much other work to do to get back to it.

Best wishes. Keep trying.

 

[Shogun]

Thanks!

So, I had the screen print done and was ready to actually put paint to shirt today but...

Originally, my urge to do this project was born of this:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn43W40q330]How to make an awesome shirt with bleach and stencils - YouTube[/ame]

However, the design I wanted was way, way too detailed for me to cut out with an exacto knife (or, more precisely, too much of a pain in the ass) so I searched for the photo emulsion method of conveying a design to a pattern. My mistake is that I tried to continue with the bleach solution using the silkscreen even though there were obvious differences in the processes (screen instead of open area within a stencil for instance, gel over screen instead of the thin liquid of the bleach solution, etc) and the result was nothing like I'd hoped for. AND, to my ire, the bleach solution caused the emulsion to scrape out when I tried to wash the bleach out. So, the screen was ruined. Grrrrrr..


So, as with your advice, i'll be starting over again tonight and rescreening the frame and applying the photo emulsion so it can dry. I'm working with things of which I am not terrible familiar but at least the process has worked out; my mistakes were truly my mistakes. It's just a pain in the ass to retread on a project I have more time into than I care to admit.

anyway, thanks for reading and the thread input!

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks, Shogun, for the video that shows what a 50-50 solution does to a particular t-shirt. I wouldn't have expected a red, unless I missed something. We have had the totally unexpected joy of having 5 wild flamingos land in our lake shallows area today, and I can't seem to concentrate too well when the heron and egrets just came up and don't exactly know how to drive them away, and certainly didn't succeed. So if I missed a dye process, I'll have to come back tomorrow. My computer station overlooks the lake, and I love watching the egrets until they migrate elsewhere. I never dreamed a flamingo would land here, much less 5 of them all on the same day for the first time. They may have flown over and noticed the egrets and herons here, and guessed the food must be pretty good. We try to keep the dog away from the pond, and I won't even go out there if it upsets the big birds. They're endangered, so they're special to me.

Pardon the yakkety yak, but I'll have to come back and review the video to see if I missed something or if the red is expected in the design when you get there.

I know it will have to dry, but hope you will scan your finished product when you're done to show it off so we can see it. Oh, I forget. Other people know how to use a camera.

I don't and my dear one developed dementia a couple of years ago, and one thing he lost was how to use a camera, go through process, etc. He was my right arm in our quilt business, because he could take pictures of stuff I designed, and we sold books and patterns for 25 years in addition to supplies for fiber artists who love quilts and threads.

The quilt arts are different from other media, because fabrics come preprinted, and you can't mix 10,000 different combinations over a couple of weeks' time like you can with a painter's brush.

I look forward to seeing your design. I think that's really a neat thing to do. Be careful what you mix bleach with. I did severe damage to my lungs once when I decided to try two friends' cleaning techniques at the same time. One used bleach to clean everything, another used ammonia. I decided it was too much trouble to go through two processes, so I mixed them together. I was pretty sick, and got pneumonia twice that winter, one right away, and one in January when it was a really cold one, too. Since then, I've read people have actually died mixing those two products.

Since then, I've never cared much for mixing dyes, etc., and I just don't like chemicals, so I never got into dying fabrics, either. Fortunately, I could pick the color palette in my own store, so really artistic gals loved the shop because they liked full color choices just like any other artist would.

Again, good luck, and thanks for sharing the video. He was thinking along the same lines as my design/techniques professor - practice makes perfect, keep trying.

 

[Shogun]

Back in college I took a 7x7 foot square of heavy black cotton and tried to tye dye it using bleach. It turned out really cool and had the black to red to orange to white look about it. Today, however, mine didn't do what his in the video did; I assume because I used too much bleach and didn't dab it off because of the silk screen. Mine turned white like one would expect.

anyway, thanks for checking it out. Have a great evening!

 

[freedombecki]

Yes, one thing he did say is there is a difference between a 50-50 bleach mix which he said he preferred and higher ones didn't work out as well.

Thanks for sharing about the red color. I had to take my eyes off the screen one too many times and it wasn't clear to me. Everything else he said seemed pretty clear, though.