mini silk screen part 2

So it's dry now!  To finish this project all I need are: a screen with the image on it, a flat piece of cardboard or mat board and some paint!  Since I'm not going to be washing this mini shirt at all regular acrylic paint would have worked out just fine, but I just used my fabric silkscreen ink since it dries a little softer.

So here's everything! You can see that I added tape around the design on the bottom of my screen (the part that rests against the shirt).  Normally I would fill in the whole rest of the screen with tape to be safe, but the shirt is so small I only had to go out as far as the shirt.

I thoroughly  taped the shirt down, since it's so small it's not going to sit still very well!

This is my registration system!  Once I flood the screen with paint I won't be able to see where I'm placing the design through the paint, so I have to set it up so that I'll know exactly where to put the screen.

You can find really good screen printing instructions online, but it's really short and simple!  Just run a line of paint above where your design is, take your little square of cardboard (ideally a squeegie, but I don't have one that small) and very gently, without pressing down smear the paint over the design.  Make sure that it covers the entire design.  Then do a little test print, go over it again with your squeegie, this time press down fairly hard!  

Now lift up your screen to see your test print!  If everything seems good, it's a go!  For this really small one I had to move fast since if the paint dries in your screen, the screen is done for.  Since the test looked good I went ahead and did the shirt!

Woohoo, not bad!

 

After just a little touching up, it's acceptable I think!