Screen-Printed Marshmallows !

1. INTRO : Hi, my name is Eric and I'm the owner of push-pull print shop where we specialize in unique and limited print editions. Today I'm going to teach you how to put your design on a marshmallow using chocolates here. The great thing about screen printing is the versatility of the process. And a good example of that is using chocolate syrup as ink. Years ago, I traveled to many different street fairs selling T-shirts. I used to print my logo onto marshmallows to give away to customers. Everyone always loved them and sometimes I think there were more popular than the t-shirts. Printed. Marshmallows are perfect for parties, weddings, and really just any special occasion. Although the technique is fairly simple, you will need to know how to get your image onto a screen using emulsion or another non photographic stencil technique, like a paper stencil. Let's get started. 2. MATERIALS : The materials you will need for this project are marshmallows, a silkscreen, a squeegee tape, a spray bottle filled with water, a rag, and chocolate syrup. We're going to be printing without holding the screen in place so we don't need any hinge clamps or anything like that. If you were making these for an event, wearing plastic food grade gloves is a good idea. Now that we have our materials, Let's make the artwork. 3. ARTWORK : To create our artwork, the first thing we wanna do is measure a few marshmallows to get an idea of the general size. Because marshmallows vary in size, we want to give ourselves a border around the artwork to make sure it will fit. You want to create something fairly simple in terms of line work. There's only so much detail on Marshmallow kinda comedy. I'm going to make some drawings with a marker on transparency so I can hold them up to get the sizing right. I'm also going to make some examples with a computer and a film printer. Whatever you decide to do, it is a good idea to make several sizes of the same design to see what works best. Bolder lines will work better here than thinner. And it's a good idea to make several designs because you can usually fit multiple on the same screen. Once the work is done, it's time to make our screen. 4. SCREEN MAKING : When choosing the mesh for our screen, we want to use something that's fairly open. So generally between an 80 and a 156, something a little higher, a little lower will work. But the higher meshes is going to be harder to print onto the marshmallow. To make our screen, I'm going to use the photo emulsion method. You can also do this with a paper or vinyl cuts tensile. When I code my screen, I'm using a 125 mesh and doing two coats on the back of the screen, followed by one coat on the front of the screen. This will ensure a bit thicker stencil and more syrup being printed. When placing your artwork on the screen, leave enough space around the image or images so that you can easily flood the stencil with ink. When exposing your screen, pay careful attention to make sure that it is not underexposed. An underexposed screen is not hard and all the way and can leach photo chemicals onto your marshmallow. You can do this using an exposure meter, but another tell-tale sign of an underexposed screen is the front of the emotion will feel slimy when you're washing it out. You can also post expose your screen after you've already watched it out to make sure that it is completely hardened before printing. A good way to do this is to place it in the sun for a few minutes until it is completely hardened. With our screen done, we're ready to print. 5. PRINTING : When I first show people screen printed marshmallows, the first thing they say to me is, how did you get that on there? How did you print that? Even when I show people that have printed for many years, they still have trouble figuring out how it's done. It's actually very simple. They do make sophisticated presses to print on cylindrical objects. But for our purposes, all we're gonna do is take our ink, our chocolate syrup, put it on the screen, flood the ink into the stencil. Flip it over. And we're going to roll the marshmallow on the screen transferring the ink. Because this method does not involve any kind of hinge clamps or registration system to hold the screen in place. After we're done printing the marshmallow. We then want to take it and arrested on top something like your roll tape so that the ink does not get on the table and make this tensile blurry. Chocolate syrup can be pretty messy. You can also take out the designs that you're not printing. Let's start with Happy Birthday. Using chocolate syrup as a ink can be a little trickier because it is thinner than regular screen printing that you buy in a store. After all, it was meant to be eaten and not print it. I find that if you're syrup is a little too thin, could heat it on low and the sauce pan and add cornstarch to thicken it up, you'll have to let the ink cool to see how thick it gets. Another method would be to take the syrup and put it in the fridge or the freezer for a little bit. So that's not frozen, but it's a little firmer. So we've got our anchor ready and we're ready to print. This is a little on the thin side, but we're going to try it and see what happens. We're going to add a little bit of chocolate syrup onto the screen. Just a little bit. Then we're going to flood the image with the ink. You can see how much lighter the ink looks in this screen. When you flip your screen over, take a look at how much ink is actually in the stencil. If it looks thin, you're going to want to flood it again. Generally, you're going to probably do it twice or three times. So now we're going to roll. So you want to go kinda slow to look, to see are transfer to the marshmallow. Try to keep your fingers out of the way. You can also try experimenting with different kinds of syrup like this strawberry flavor. This was kinda thin, so I preach killed some of it in the freezer. You also need to feel out and adjust the pressure as you go. If the image is coming out blurry, you are probably using too much pressure. If the image is light, you might not be pressing hard enough or do not have enough ink stencil and need to flood more. Eventually, if you print enough marshmallows, it's going to start to clog a little bit because the marshmallow particles get into the screen mesh. If that happens, you can just rinse it with water and start again. This kind of printing is all about the flood and getting an even coating of ink to fill this tensile. Keep on checking the back of the screen until you figure out how many poles It's going to take. When you're done printing cleanup is easy. Just spray it with some water and wipe clean with a rag. 6. BONUS: Once you learn the rolling print technique, you can use it for other materials. Glass, candles, bottles, and others. Cylindrical objects can be printed using this method. You are not going to get as clean a print as traditional SOC screen, but for the right simple designs, that technique works great. You want to make sure you get the right kind of ink to stick to what you are printing on. This is some enamel ink from Nasdaq that is permanent on glass. The nice thing about printing on Glass is that if you mess up the print, you can just wipe it off and try again. In some ways it's easier to print on glass because it is much smoother than a marshmallow. What else will you print on using this technique? 7. OUTRO : We've reached the end of our lesson. Thank you for watching, and I hope that this video opens up the world of screen printing a little bit more for you. The versatility of screen printing is unmatched, and printing with chocolate syrup is a great addition to your skills as a printmaker. Please upload your printed marshmallows to the project gallery on the class page and feel free to contact me with any questions or troubleshooting. If you can please leave a review and follow my profile for all things silkscreen, take care and have a wonderful day.