Successful Screen Print Test

I am a very sick man. No, I mean, I actually have the flu right now. It's no fun. No fun at all. I'm a total mess. BUT, I somehow managed to find the energy and motivation to do a test today using my new speedball ink and fixer. Last time I did some printing, I did it in my kitchen. While this granted me some freedom as far as mess-making goes, it was extremely limiting in the move-around-room arena. This time, I decided to do it in my dining room, where I fortunately have no table. Yes, the bachelor lifestyle has its advantages.

I threw down a bunch of butcher paper to prevent mess, and also put some butcher paper over a big sheet of MDF, to ensure it would not get trashed by the process.

I cut out a small sample of the milliskin fabric I have targeted as the briefs fabric, ironed it, and taped it to the paper.

I then mixed up a little batch of ink with the fixer. I globbed the ink onto the screen and did three things. The red ink you see in the center of the board is the first stroke I did with the squeegee. I believe this is called the "Flood" stroke. Or pass. As you can see, not a lot of ink passed through it, but a bunch of it got stuck up in the screen.

I then moved the screen over, and did another pass on the paper, just to see if the ink was flowing. It looks much better.

Now that the screen had some ink in it, I globbed on some more ink, which will basically act to push the ink that's already on the screen through it.

Here's what the final results were:



Here's how the fabric looked:



And here's a nice close up of the fabric:



I am REALLY pleased with this, even though it's not perfect. This was just an experiment, and I certainly learned a lot from it.

Now, I'm waiting for the ink to cure, which should take a full four days to be COMPLETELY cured, though it is currently dry to the touch after six hours.

The diamonds came out REALLY nicely and evenly, and the ink seems to have penetrated the fabric quite well. Really good stuff. I'm stoked.