This is inexpensive but slightly time consuming. The results are much nicer than stenciling, but not as nice as professional screen printing (which is expensive).
Steps
- Take an inexpensive wooden or plastic embroidery hoop (available at craft supply stores or Wal*Mart) that is about 2 or 3 inches bigger than you want the design to be.
- Trace your image onto a piece of white thin polyester lining (available at craft stores) with a pencil and stretch it onto the frame.
- Take a small bit of food coloring and pour it into a bottle of mod podge. This is optional, but since modpodge dries clear, it is very helpful to color it so you can see where it has been applied.
- Take a small paint brush and dip it into your mod podge. Paint the area all around your image where you don't want the paint to go through, almost like you are creating the stencil.
- Once you have finished, let it dry. Once it is dry, place the screen onto whatever is to be printed. Make sure that the acetate is touching the fabric to be printed, which means the wood of the embroidery frame is up towards you.
- Scoop a small amount of paint onto the screen. Using a squeegee (the shower cleaning kind, not the tiny lame discount store kind) run it across the "stencil" this will push the paint through the acetate and make nice clear images. If you are printing something big, you might need more paint.
Tips
- Don't wiggle the fabric or the stencil when you squeegee the paint. this will cause messy lines.
- Also, make sure to use quite a bit of mod podge. this will make for clean lines.
Things You'll Need
- A yard of cheap polyester lining fabric.
- An embroidery hoop
- Screenprinting ink
- A squeegee
- A paintbrush
- Food coloring
- A bottle of mod podge
