Questions for any screen printers

Craft Talk
1

My lovely Hubby bought me a small screen printing kit for Christmas, it’s A5 in size and I’m hoping to make some stencils using my cutting dies/punchs and use them to do backgrounds for my card designs. The kit included 3 small tubes of ink, 2 ‘normal’ and 1 opaque my first experiment using normal ink went OK but my 2nd using the gold opaque ink went not exactly wrong but I was left with a ‘bubbled’ effect around the edge of my butterfly stencil (it was one I made myself using coated card) was it the ink or the card I used or my technique. Also these tubes of ink are not going to last forever but all the suppliers I’ve found seem to sell only large quantities, I have some tubes of watercolour and gouache that I bought a while ago, would these be suitable? (I was thinking of trying but don’t want to ruin the screen)

Thanks in advance
Diane x

2

Does nobody have any advice? :disappointed:

3

Hello Diane. Not properly up to speed with screen printing, but i do know that watercolour or gouache will not be suitable. The bubble effect is most likely the inks getting under the screen and spreading. So, a better technique may help here. The mixing of inks correctly is important. I found this for water based printing… https://content.sparkstone.co.uk/9/1/images/System_3_Screen_Printing_Instructions.jpg
I’m sure many art suppliers will have smaller quantities of inks. I get a lot of stuff from https://www.pullingers.com
happy printing.
paul

1 Like
4

Thank you Paul :slight_smile: