Creating the Screens for Screen Printing...

I was so interested in being shown this aspect of making your own screens for screen printing. I find it so relevant to know due to my recent discovery of actually learning to love textiles rather than seeing it as a huge ball of dread.

At this point the screens have already been coated and left to dry.

The screens cannot be exposed to daylight, so the room has a yellow lightbulb to help protect them, but they should be kept in a cupboard or under a blanket. Much like how a dark room operates.

Becky was working on two screens at once. She took the paper designs and placed them on a screen, carefully taping them down so they wouldn’t slip or move about.

Once the designs were secured with masking tape, Becky turned the screens over so that we could see how the end result would look, we checked everything was all OK and nothing was overlapping. We then closed the lid of the suction table and switched it on.

Once the machine was switched on, we watched the vaccum draw the rubber sheet down and Becky flipped it over to expose the screens and our images to a strong UV light for 9 minutes. We had to leave the room for this, but went back in when the 9 minutes was up and the paper was removed from the screen.

Once the process was finished, the screens were removed from the suction table and the pieces of paper were taen away. We could see that the image was now transferred onto the screen.

We washed away the excess on the screens to reveal the design underneath.

Below are my final six images that I submitted a few weeks ago to be put onto screen:

And below is my finished screen:

Next Wednesday, we will be starting to print with our screens...