Digital Vinyl Silkscreening with Illustrator and Photoshop

1. Silk Screen Class Intro: Hello. Welcome to digital silk screening and this class. We're going to explore digital design that could be turned into an analog product. We're going to create a design, a one color design in photo shop or illustrator. The choice is yours, and then we're going to have our design cutting vinyl for my demo. I'm going to be using the silhouette Cameo three. You can use the cricket or anything else that is able to cut vinyl from there. We're going to adhere to our screen like so, and we're going to print it on both paper and any fabric that you're interested in seeing the process on we're going to learn about in addition and how to print and sign in addition and as well the process of printing on fabrics for tote bags and T shirts. So for this class, be ready to have fun and explore designed digitally and print analog hope to see you here 2. Silk Screen Supplies: all right. Time for supplies. First things first. You're gonna need a silkscreen. Actually print with a squeegee any size that fits your silk screen and a spoon and bank. Don't use the spoon for anything else. Also, you're going to need some vinyl sheets I use 12 by 12. You also want to pick up a pack of the tools at work with your brand. They're just the basic ones and contact paper and just a side note on the tools. The two that I find I used the most are the scraper on the left and the hook pick on the right. You can also use expired gift card instead the scraper and at stores like Target or Wal Mart in the dental area. They do sell the little hook cleaning things so you could use that as well. Uh, you don't want to go and get the giant kit that they sell. At least you can buy or have those two things at your availability. I also need some sort of papers to print on any will work that you are interested in using and use T shirts, totes anything else you wanted print on and as well, some sort of tape so that we can do some masking with. I use Blue Painter's tape, but masking tape would work. Fine also. All right, let's go ahead and get started. 3. The Project: all right now for the class project for this project, you're going to design a simple but complex piece in illustrator Afraid a shop, whichever you're more comfortable with, and then have it cut on vinyl. You can use the silhouette. You can use the cricket, or you can go to a local screen shop who also does final cutting. You should be able to get it cut there as well. You can also, of course, do it really analog. Print it out and then using a light box, trace it and then cut it by hand. However you get a divine ALS, it's whatever is available to you from there were using one color so one color print process whatever color you like do in addition of around five prints 5 10 somewhere in that range, uh, you can do all in the same paper, or you can try a variety of papers to see how that functions just keep in mind. The true edition is five of exactly the same paper types as well. If you want to up the ante a little bit, you can print it on fabricas well so bag flour sacks for towels or even T shirts, something that you think would make a good surface toe work on. Whenever you are working, feel free to photograph your process and upload the process shots to your skill share project so that we can see what you're working on it as well. Don't forget to upload the final projects and products so that we can see the end result. 4. Creating your design in Illustrator: All right, let's go ahead and set up our file and illustrator did a command. And for new, and to set up your file, you're gonna have to know what size your frame is for your silkscreen. Find eight by 10 and I want to have a bit of room around. So I have room to the aches of actually gonna make my file of five by seven. That way, I have a little bit of wiggle room toe work with. All right, Once you have your file open, I'm gonna make the following suggestions with it. Less is actually more for this. And I know we have this pension, our design and art to make you know as much as we can of the finest of details. But for your 1st 1 I'm gonna recommend you don't go all sorts of fine detail and lots and lots and lots of, you know, action on the page. I would recommend something that's a little bit more. I was call it the simple complex. So have a shape that simplified but created in a way that you have, you know, complexity to it without getting bogged down into the details. You can use tight for this, but you're just gonna work in black and white. So maybe you want to do a quote, maybe you want to dio, you know, drawling or what have you This the actual content is completely up to you from my demo. I'm going to just makes a repeating pattern of teardrops. I'm going, Teoh Turn it to know, Phil. But I do want to keep the outline to it. Sometimes when you're taking it from the file of Illustrator into the silhouette cutter sometimes having a Phil and it will confuse it. I think it depends on your make and your model. I used the silhouette cameos three. And I found out that when it just likes to have an outline with nothing on the inside, and we're working really graphically with this said, you know, I'm just using in this case no Phil and just a black outline. I'm going to convert our path using our pencil and again if you are unfamiliar with illustrator anything that has a drop down carrot in the corner. When you click and hold and hover, you're going to get it to do with tear off my screen floats away. Um, apple zero will reset that if your screen does that when I worked with the pen tool, I do like to have it out, so I will use the tear off when I'm working. So I said a little bit easier for that. It switched to the direct select. And I'm just gonna create a teardrop shape that I'm happy with its proportions That's feeling pretty good on. I like to keep it active over here on the side. So if I later on him, like, just not feeling the hype, this and I can go back to the original one and not disturb this one. But for us, a little bit off there to the side, I'm going to go to my free transform. I'm just going to scale this down just a little bit because I want to get a nice array of teardrops on this, and I'm just gonna get it in place. And I'm gonna go to my stroke and of this gun hover my mouse in there and used my up arrow , and I'm gonna get a nice outline. All right, let's talk about let's put a crazy outline on this one. When you have a crazy large outline like this, it's going to have the tendency when you're in the thinking stage of this process to over saturate the ink onto whatever material it is you're working on. You, you know, might be able to get away with this. But if you are having problems with the ink sort of blocking onto whatever it is you're printing, try a thinner line. Uh, that's not gonna have the same intensity of the ink when it goes through your screen. So there is gonna be a little bit of play with with this. This is just like all of my other classes. If you follow, may experiment and explore, you know, if the 1st 1 feels a little wonky and okay, I think maybe this was a little bit too thick Go back into its scale them down just a little bit. Strip waas. Uh, how how are you going to figure things out Unless you have? You know, that experiment and explore time allow allow a little bit of playtime and those failures actually aren't failures. They're just helping you figure out what works. It doesn't. I think in our society side note. I feel like we want instantly be perfect at something. Don't worry about that. If it doesn't work, chuck it up to experience and just make another one. It's just vinyl, and it's just being made on the screen. Make another one. So just explore experiment. If it's too much ink, dial it down. Just cut it again. I'm gonna hold down my option key and I'm going to duplicate it. I don't know. Maybe I'll for this one. I'm just gonna do them in a row. Command D will put them all in a nice little line for us. I'm a little bit O c d. And I can see it's tilting just a little bit. I'm gonna bring my rulers out so you can see Actually, this looks pretty good. Test seven parallax. If you were really fussy, go ahead and do your top a line so that all of the points are perfect and I'm not gonna help Go ahead and group that apple G right there and I'm gonna do the exact same thing. Hold down the option key, keep them nicely and an alignment Apple, the apple tea, apple, T uh, then you can sort of decide. Is this the placement that you're looking for? Do we want some sort of words with it? I'm gonna align it again, this time to the left, just just to make sure everything's nice. Neat? Maybe it's a little bit too close here, and I'm not quite feeling how thick it is. I am gonna dial that down just a little bit. I that's feeling actually pretty good. And I'm just gonna bump them over and chest a little bit. So I know that that's right there, you know, in sort of almost center stage of the page. All right. Um, I'm gonna added emphasis Point. I think on one of these I could do that. Actually, just whenever in the screen stage you could turn one of these solid. If you want to see, you can see and I'm gonna select all that's Apple A and have a shift. Apple G. That's that on group. And maybe for this one, I actually do when it solid. So it looks like one is a little bit different than all the rest. Gives a little bit of a focal point for our pattern for mining and experiment with different material. I'm gonna try someone, papers and not just one paper. Just a couple papers. See how different people you six take the material. And then I also have some bags in a T shirt, so I want to see how it interacts with different products and surfaces. All right, so if you wanted to add words and wars, this is sort of what I was saying. What I'm saying simple complex. I mean, this was just a simple, you know, teardrop scaled down with a little bit smaller of a stroke, repeated and then repeated again, Uh, so we made a little bit more complex, but it is going to cut really well whenever we get it into that screen stage, and I'm just gonna go ahead and save it on to my desktop, and I call it here drops one. So I confined it that this will be my original native file, and I never mess with that one. In case I do change my mind, I Then I'm going to do a save as and I'm gonna add an underscore expanded on and then that way, whenever I do expand my strokes, um, if it changed my mind. It's on a separate file, and I could go back into that native file that was the original, and you can see teardrops one expanded. It's a lot you're gonna find. It's a lot easier to expand your strokes. And if you work with printers a lot, say, you know, silkscreen shops or in bernard embroidery shops for logos and one color prints, they typically want your strokes expanded. So let's go ahead and do that. Just gonna group out of, you know, sort of hyper paranoia. You're going to go up in tow, object expand. And I always leave Phil and Stroke because I do want to do both. And then, if you're paying attention, look at this blue line. It's sort of the intersection in the middle of our actual line or shape that we've created , okay, and you can see what happens. It's expanded at how zoom and so you can see it squeaking. It's expanded it, so it's no longer a stroke, and it's now this one sort of shape. So we're dealing with shapes down set of lines. Uh, this is particularly useful because now, when it cuts, it knows the machine knows that it's gonna cut this path and it knows to cut this path, so it's going to help your machine figure out where the edges are. I'm going to just toss this one. And for illustrator, if our final stage is just an export, let's go ahead and save this file just so that we know that this is the expanded one. Um, if you believe it's a pay extra Adeline or it's a whole other system software for the Civil Wet studio, you can get it to read factor files. I think it's sug files from illustrator, so if you want to put the extra expense on, if you're doing this, a lot of great go for it. But if you're kind of cheap like me, you could actually export your files out to be read within the silhouette studio. So you're not gonna have the extra expense. I'm kind of cheap, so I just do the export. Maybe it's easier than other way, but I figure most of us you know we have Illustrator. If you're in the design world, you really have illustrated you're comfortable with, why keep adding expenses on it if you feel like it's something you need? Absolutely. Then go for it. If not, don't worry about it. If you go into file and we're gonna go into our friend that export, we're putting it on the desktop just so that we can find a little bit easier. Um, under our file format while you're actually going toe want to click on? Is this one here? The auto cad interchange file You're going to see in parentheses that it's gonna take the X f? Uh, some of these eso what programs will take the tips in ot efs. If you're using the publishing style or document ones, the D accept piles. This is for, you know, I am not sure I'll double check to see a photo shop when we're in the photo shop section. But I have never had an issue with it in this format. So bypassing the extra, you know, funding. If you don't want trunk in to buy another part of that software, just export it is the auto cad interchange D excess gonna hit export. I don't change anything. I just leave it all to the system default. And then let's go ahead scale down so we can see it. You're gonna get a file that looks like this Just has the d accept. This is what you're looking for, and this is what's going to get us into our next step. 5. Creating your design in Photoshop: all right. Photo shop is gonna have the same settings, except we want the resolution to be 300. So just double check to make sure it's 300 on for this section. I am going to speed it up just so that you can see part of the design process, part of the typographic decision making. On at the end. I'm gonna talk you through how to save out your files so that you can get it into the cutting machine. - All right, Once everything has been scaled down to fit to the page, we want to do our original save of the native file and instantly go ahead and save it as the underscore flat. That way, if something happens, you can always go back to that native file. But for our type, in order to avoid any distortions, you are going to want a work with it flattened. So it does, you know, has the raster ization to it, so make sure you save it out as that flat once you have it flattened, you guessed it with one more set of as so let's go to file. Save has. And this time we're gonna change our format to the PNG. PNG is readable in our silhouette machine and you'll be able to do the final cutting from there. 6. Silhouette Cutting with Illustrator File: all right. Now that we have our files set up, we're gonna go ahead and get them cut into our vinyl. I do use this silhouette on. I said it was the cameo three. They have a couple different versions. As long as it cuts vinyl, you're going to be good to go. You can also use the cricket as long as it cuts vinyl. That's fine. You can also cut it by hand. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you have access to none of the above local sign shops that have vinyl as an option should be able to cut this. Also, I've had some side projects before. I had my machine that I took to them and the cost was actually pretty low. So option number three go ahead and check with a local sign shop that does vinyl, and you should be able to get it cut. They're also, if you're doing that, just allow for the turnaround. All right, so we need to get our file in there. I'm gonna use the teardrops one. Just click and drag it in, and you're going to see the file is placed on there. But if we click on it. We're going to see That's a little over 10 inches by six. So we needed this around a five by seven, so it would fit comfortably on my eight by 10 frame. Hold down that shift key. Always hold that down. So we keep our proportions and get it to around seven. I'm gonna be somewhat flexible with that part. Only cause I know have a little bit of wiggle room with my actual frame, and I'm just gonna slide it down just a little bit. So it's not right up on the edge because I like to have a little bit extra when I am going to be adhesive being heard hearing it down to the actual silkscreen. That way I have a little bit of wiggle room with that. No. One thing you're gonna notice is there's a design mode, the store mode library and the send. So the design mode was the one I was talking about. If you didn't have ah, the creative cloud, you can use their tools here. Also, you can see they have the type tool line, tools, shaped tools, etcetera. You can pretty much do anything that you can in the other programs, you know, within reasons, but you can create your own design here. Also, it's going to be up to you, um, and your working style for that. So if you don't have the software, go ahead and you can design it in your program. Um, the store. I don't even know if I have accessed. I do. Okay. There are things that you can buy. Library Is this stuff that you actually have in your local library that you have pre purchased or uploaded? Um, but for the most part, I like to create it and and have my control and precision in the creative cloud, and then bring it in. And when we're ready, check out these lines when we hit Send, we're going to see these red lines, and the red lines are showing what are cut marks are actually going to be. So what we're going to be using is first, you're gonna need to change your material. And we're using vinyl. So scrolls, girls, girls, girls, girls roll till you see vinyl and mine is glossy. So I want to make sure that's checked. And if you got the match use Matt etcetera. You can see we have all sorts of different options here. We're going to tell it to cut, and we want it to depends on your style. You can cut. It's gonna cut everything, including the intersections. Or it's just going to do the outline itself because I want He used to be filled. So these are the strokes. Basically, I want it to cut so that I can peel that part out. And I just use the auto blade. So it does all all that sort of science e Mathy stuff for us. Once you have it, the cut auto blade and then depending on which you want edge or no edge, you can go ahead the send area and hit start. 7. Silhouette Cutting with Photoshop File: All right. So we saw how illustrated works. Let's hop in and see how Photoshopped works. We have our PNG file. Go ahead, drag it in. You click on it. Indeed it is. That five by seven. But if we click on our send, we're gonna notice those red outlines were missing. So nothing is going to be cut herbal at this stage, What we have to do is do one extra little step under your panels. If it's not already out, you're gonna want to bring out trace. It looks like a little butterfly e symbol, but it's gonna be on your panels menu over there. You need to first tell it what it needs to trace. So you're gonna click one time on it Purser turns into across there, and when you click holding drag, it's going to allow you to have a selected area. And then when you let go poop everything that's in that is going to be trace of functions A kindle live trace in illustrator. But this one's a little bit more exact. You can kick the fresh hold up a little bit if you want. I leave mine on solid fill in the last step you need to do is hit trace. There's our red lines. That's what we want when I hit Send, I can see Yes, indeed, there are those red lines, so we know it's going to function something to consider. And I'm just going to click and drag over this if you have something with text. When we put this onto our screens were going to be putting it on Stewart of the You know the front. If you're looking at the main part of the screen, so it's going to the wood that's in the back, you're gonna hold on to this would then be reversed. So if you put this on the inside of your frame, which I don't recommend just cause it's bumpy and weird and hard to clean, um, put on inside. It's fine, but on that outside part it's going to be backwards. So we have to go one extra step if you have type and you actually have to click on mirror, that is actually what you're going to be printing. So I'm gonna toss this one where cutting and vinyl rather lay it over here. Now we're ready to print. It's going to be the same thing. Go ahead, hit, send. Make sure your substrates on whatever vinyl type you have. Make sure it's on cut. And if you have the auto blade, you know, use auto blade and there are other ones also. So, auto blade I like because it was I said in the last month, Does the does the Matthew bits for us, and when you're ready, you can go ahead and hit Send. 8. Load Vinyl and Cut: all right. Time to load your final Align it to the left marker. Once you have it in center, hit your load button. And here's a time lapse of the cutting process. 9. Screen Prep: All right, Now we're ready to put our vinyl onto our screens for this section, you're gonna need the screen that you're gonna be printing on the vinyl, that you've just cut scissors. And I'm gonna use the spatula and the scraper tool from my little silhouette kit. That way, I could get, uh, this peeled easier and adhered to the screen Better. I have the contact paper and duct tape. Sometimes I fluctuate between duct tape of masking tape, but I want to be able to use this screen a couple times, so I am going to use duct tape. All right, let me make let me make some room for this. All right, So the first stage for this is we want to get rid of this extra vinyl. What I do like to do is save this part, and then I can reuse it later down the line so it doesn't go to waste. So just cut some of this extra off, and I'm just going to make a straight cut down so that I can reuse that portion and cut this portion off. Now you notice I just sort of trim the edges off rather haphazardly because once we have it on the screen, I may use the duct tape to fill in the margin so that the ink doesn't blob through. All right, so the next part, it's going to get a little bit time consuming, depending on the complexity of your design. But we need to get this to be peeled out. So grab your little spatula and we're going to go into a little bit of a time lapse so you can just sit back and enjoy the peeling process. All right, Time to peel. All right. Once you have everything peeled where we have peeled, the ink is going to go through. So just keep that in mind whenever you are doing the peeling out stage and next stages, we need to get this onto the screen. Now you can, of course, carefully peel and get it down. But this is where the contact paper comes in handy. So this is actually going to sort of semi keep things in place so that nothing wiggles around while we're doing are placing it onto the screen. All right, let me let me make some room. All right. What you want to do is just trim enough so that you can have the piece that we have cut covered. So let me just cut a little bit of this. And I tend to just go up the whole robe so that I keep my end piece is nice and neat like so. And then I just keep my extras and a pile. I have a nice little box of odds and ends that way. I can use that for a smaller project down the line, flying it up again. Get that out of the way. Trim that down. So this goes in my scrap pile and what we're going to want to dio is when we peel the contact paper and this is usually the part that takes me the absolute longest. So bear with me on this part. But what we want to do is get the adhesive side to be down. On top of that, the top of the vinyl that we've just peeled. Here we go. All right. So I have a little bit started. You can peel, and this is reusable. So if you if you want, you can just keep this aside somewhere to, and that usually start with it in the middle and I roll out and I'm not gonna put a ton of pressure on it that do want to make sure that it's staying in place. If I pushed down too much, it's going to want to stay, you know, really tacky and stick everything together, grabbing my handy dandy tool again, just in case the details start lifting. I like to keep this tool near me so that I don't fingerprint the vinyl so it doesn't lose its stick, and I just slowly start peeling it. So far, so good. So where that started, toe lift. I just sort of push it back down. And with that spatula, lay back down in place exactly where it needs to be. All right, there we go. So now when we put it on our screen, all of the little bits and bobs air going to stay exactly where they should same deal late from the middle out, we turn it around and lightly. Same thing is before, not a ton of pressure, just enough with our scraper so that I know that it's going to stay in place and then grabbing missed school again. Start peeling the contact paper away and you can see everything stays in place, thanks to the contact paper. All right, So you can recycle or you can toss this. It's going to be up to you. Flip it back. Now we really dio a good scraping because we want this to be really adhere to that screen. And we now have our design on our screen. This part here, though the ANC's going to block out on. So we need to grab our duct tape, a mask that section off. And we're going to do this on all four sides. When we have this done that, we're ready to roll. All right side ones done side to, and I sometimes take it over the edge so that it has a little bit of, ah, encasement to it, going to be up to you if you want it to have a little wrap around or not. In a pinch, I'll use masking tape, but if you do more than one, go with it. With the cleaning, there is a chance for the masking tape to fall off if you're going to wash it a couple times, the duct tape is the better solution for your mask out, all right? And last, not least our final bit. And if something happens in the design that you don't like, you can just take. Just put the duct tape over it, and it will hide it so the ink will not go through them. All right, there we go, our screen as now massed. It's in place, and we're ready to register it. 10. Paper Registration: All right, now it's time to register our paper. We have our screens with our design on it. We have our paper that's already to the size that we want it to be. This is just watercolor, mixed media paper that I got in a pad and cut down and our handy dandy tape. And for my registration stage, I do like to use the blue painter's tape masking tape, duct tape. It all works when I do the frame blocking stage. I do like the duct tape, but masking tape will work also. All right, set our extra papers on the side and grabbed one that we're gonna use as our preliminary set up. So we have our five by seven design that we made, and then we have our paper. Now I have a pretty decent light source. So I am going to line this up exactly how I want it. And when I'm happy with it while still holding it down, putting a little bit of pressure on so it doesn't slip. I lay it down on my work surface. And how it is is how it's going to stay. I'm going to use the blue tape to mask the edge of the wooden frame. And I usually just do corner the corner on this one so that whenever I'm lining it up, I can see that, you know, I have corner to corner exactly how I want it. You can do all four, if you so desire so and then once you have that finished, carefully lift your frame so you don't move the paper. And now we're going to register the paper. If you wanted, you could use a slightly different take. That way you don't get confused. Maybe a washi tape. That's fine. Um, but then that way you have the marks for this Olsen for this to keep it a little bit less confusing. I'm just going to do the top for registration. All right? When you have this stage finished, then you're ready to go on to the thinking stage. All right? So when we take it off, we can see where our paper goes, and we can see where our frame goes. Whenever we're going, Teoh, do the lay down stage and squeegee. All right, let's get ready to ink. 11. Ink Time: All right. Now we are ready to think we have a registration. We have our pile of paper. We have our screen for this part. We're also gonna add our bank, a spoon and the squeegee to our mix side note on the spoon. And this might seem like common sense, but I always always give a little bit of warning with this. Once you use your spoon for anything, aren't related, Don't take it back into the kitchen. It is now. It is not permanent studio spoon. You can also use plastic spoons. That's fine. Also, I like to get these at, you know, Thrifty Stores, etcetera. And in that way I always have something that's a little bit more long lasting. All right, papers in place. Our frame is ready. Let's get those corners lined up. Let's start printing. All right. So for this I usually have the 1st 1 is a sort of artist proof so that, you know, the ink isn't quite charged in the frame yet, so there might be some hick UPI areas. I am working on a textured surface for this video because I didn't want to mess up my desk , but I would recommend a sheet of paper that doesn't have this sort of texture because the texture might translate. So we're all going to find out together. But it is nice to have a little bit of protection on the desk going to grab a spoon of bank , apply it at the top and then also at the earlier stage, you know, maybe have too much. Maybe of too little that artists proof. And you oftentimes see this. If you go to the art shows or the galleries, you're gonna see addition. So this one for class projects we're going to run in addition, so at the beginning stage of the print, you make a decision. This is gonna be additional 10 20 5100 and 50. However many. And then whenever you create it, you number it go onto the next one. Um, artist proof isn't in that. It's just you checking to make sure everything's a OK before the addition Grun, so that we can see. You know, Do you like your paper is or the colors lining up etcetera. So it's going to give you it's going to give you a chance to edit before you send it out into the world. So for the 1st 1 you know, just make sure everything's gonna go OK, And then you can start running your addition. All right, so I'm gonna hold it like so and I usually stand for this part, but I can't for the video purposes and then flip it and take it back up. Usually if you look at your going to see, like, if there's a couple little white splotches in there, if you see that you might want to run one more pass and I start scoop extra up at the end. The only issue that that is you could end up getting a little bit too much on your squeegee . So do that part with caution. All right, hold that paper down and start peeling it. Oh, our first print. So here's what I want you to dio. So our class project was to have, in addition, so decide what your addition is. We're going to do a paper edition for sure for the class, and then anything else beyond that is going to be a bonus. You want explore different types of paper to see what that does. You want a print on fabric. Do you wanna print on T shirts? Etcetera? I am gonna also show how to print on fabric just so that you have that process down. But for this, you know, Take this. I'm just using black ink. But you can use any one color ink that you want. These hot pink you can use blue yellow, etcetera. Do your addition from this. Whatever you're finished. Just a side note. Take your spoon and scoop up any of that extra on the schema. But this year, dollop it back in waste not want not and do the same thing with your squeegee. So that everything all the waste actually isn't waste because you can use this again. So for this, do your addition of however many your number is Sign it. I'm going to show you how to sign it in a moment. And then you can decided you want to make more from this. Now the vital eventually when you clean these enough will lift off. But from the times that I've done this in my class before, we usually get a fair number of runs with this. So by runs, I mean, like the washout so I would say three washouts. You should You should be OK. Depends how voracious you are at scrubbing, so you should be able to get a couple out of that. But it's going to depend on you know how much you scrub. So let's go ahead and sign these. That's crab. All right, let's grab a sharp pencil. So I was going to do in addition of five. So this is number one of five. This was teardrops. I think we called it, and then you sign it on the right side. Left is the title middle is number of addition and your signature on. Then that way you can keep track of what part of the process you were working on. So also, make sure you number your addition for this and be sure to share everything in the class below so that we can see part of your process and so that we can see your end products. All right, go ahead and get the addition printed 12. Printing on Fabric: all right, while my screen is still flooded with Think I want to go ahead and print it on a fabric object? In this case, I have a tote bag and I buy these in bulk off of Amazon. Any place that has wholesale, you should be able to find it. Oh, and this is just newspaper fillings. So any advertisements or sections that I'm done with remain typically set aside for the studio Because if we were to just silkscreen on this, the bank's gonna flood through and print the back. This is going to create a barrier. So what, we're gonna dio And this would work for T shirts to anything with fabric. Make sure you have something sort of cushioning behind it so the ink isn't going to blob through All right? The bank and I'm actually using is Textile Inc. There is two different types. You can get the speedball textile or the Dick Blick fabric one, or you can get for paper in our class. Pdf. So I actually have the list four both, so you can decide which one you want. Our screen. We'll go ahead and put it exactly where we want this to go through, and it's the exact same process. Get the ink towards the top, play it out, make sure it covers it well. Grab that squeegee and it's the exact same process to the end, and I sort of scoop up a little bit extra there so that I can make a good second pass. Sometimes fabrics a little bit more thirsty, so I will do the two passes just to make sure. Set that aside and lift and voila! You have your bag with your design on it. Let it dry. Another show this way. Let it dry completely. You're going to need the heat. Set its to take the newspaper feller out. When you're at that stage, you could hot iron it or toss it in your dryer. If you have an actual heat press, that's perfect. But that one is usually a little bit less practical. Most people do not have a heat press at their availability, but just iron over it. Once it's completely dry. We're toss in the dryer by itself when it's completely drive for like 30 minutes or what have you, and just get it to be heat set and then you'll be good to go. So you can print on any fabric, any paper, anything that will make you know the the impression from your silk screen. So, as usual, you know how it is with my classes and want you to explore and have fun. Try different materials, see how it works and, as usual, photograph, um, and share below so we can see and enjoy your process. Have fun. 13. Clean Up: Also, after you've scooped the extra ink out and have put the extras and you're going to need to clean your screen, run it under some water until everything is all the ink is out to the best of its ability. You might have to take a cloth of some sort and get it out in the little details, but you're going to be re able to reuse your screen once it's dry and which completely done with whatever it is you want to do with this. Peel off your duct tape that was masking the edges and as well peel off that vinyl and then you'll be able to make its many more vinyl silk screens as you want. 14. Conclusion: so I hope you had a great time with this class. We've had some time on the computer designing elements that we would like to see in our own , you know, printed out design. We've got to explore the analog as well and to see what our process looks like when it's cut with vinyl and added to ink and silk screened. We got to see different papers, different materials and fabrics, and we got to explore and have fun. I can't wait to see what you create. The short a share in the student section below. It's always fun to see everyone's process and the end products. I hope you have a really fun relaxing m creative time creating your digital silkscreen projects. Have fun.