bookhou at home

exposing your screen - some of you who do screen printing know what the steps are - I thought this would be useful for those who don't do this and might find it interesting. With everything you do - it takes practice. For instances coating the screen. I get all my supplies at G&S Dye here in Toronto - they deliver. You can also use speedball emulsion - which isn't the best, but good for short runs. that little doodle I showed you earlier gets scanned and put into Photoshop or Illustrator and I do a repeat with the pattern and clean up any lines or increase any small lines. You can do all this by hand, but I find this way of preparing the design is less time consuming and it still maintains the hand drawn look. I get my paper printed at kinkos because they have a large printer. By doing it on Photoshop I can also see if the pattern repeats okay. This is also a wonderful tutorial on creating a repeat design. I save on acetate or mylar by greasing my paper with vegetable oil. By doing this it increases the translucentcy of the paper. For the photo emulsion technique the black areas protect the light sensitive emulsion and the white areas hardens the emulsion - so when you rinse your screen the areas of your design becomes the stencil. I have a light box in the basement that I got from Silk Screen Supplies and it works really well - it has a timer and it takes only 2.5 minutes for the exposure time. This unit doesn't have a vacuum so after placing the screen on top of my design I place a piece of felt and a piece of wood cut to the inside dimensions of the screen. I place weights on top for a good contact. If you don't have close contact - your image comes out blurry. after the time is up the light automatically turns off and I rinse the screen with a garden hose with luke warm water and all the areas where my design was washes out. here it is all rinsed - I let it sit in the sun to cure. The curing period just allows the emulsion to harden further. Next step printing.