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  • How to Mix Pigment and Binder to Screen Print onto Fabric

    How to Mix Pigment and Binder to Screen Print onto Fabric

    Making your own inks for screen printing onto fabric is an economical way to get a wide range of colours exactly to your specifications. The mixed inks will leave the fabric soft and washable. Here’s how to mix them: Start with Fabric Screen Printing Binder. This is a colourless screen printing medium and will form the … Continue reading "How to Mix Pigment and Binder to Screen Print onto Fabric"
  • Making a Fabric Printing Pad

    Making a Fabric Printing Pad

    Having a fabric printing pad makes a huge difference when you’re printing at home or in the studio. When screen printing or block printing onto fabrics, it helps to have slight padding underneath your printing surface to ensure you get an even print. You can also pin out fabric to the pad. We use these …
  • Which Carbon Paper Should I Use?

    Which Carbon Paper Should I Use?

    When transferring designs to a block, there are several factors to consider: can the design be seen on the block? Will it wash off? Will the design be transferred to the print? In this project, we test two different carbon papers on six different relief blocks. We test them with three types of ink: waterbased, water …
  • Ironing the Wax out of a Batik

    Ironing the Wax out of a Batik

    Making a batik is the satisfying process of layering wax and dye to create bold, intricate designs. The more layers of dye and wax that are added, the thicker and stiffer the fabric will become. At the end of this process, you’re left with a hard, milky-looking piece of cloth. Here’s how to iron the … Continue reading "Ironing the Wax out of a Batik"
  • Screen Printing Hand Drawings using Film Marker Pens

    Screen Printing Hand Drawings using Film Marker Pens

    Translating drawings into print doesn’t have to include scanning and digitally manipulating your design on a computer. By using opaque film markers onto screen film we are able to skip the digital part altogether and create a photographic screen directly from the drawings you produce. This allows you to work in full scale, even tracing…
  • Caring for an Exposed Screen

    Caring for an Exposed Screen

    It’s important to take care of your exposed screen so that it can last for multiple print runs. With proper care, you should be able to use your screen again and again until you’re ready to have it washed off and a new design exposed. Read on for a list of rules and advice …
  • Jigsaw Linocut with a Rainbow Roll

    Jigsaw Linocut with a Rainbow Roll

    A rainbow roll is a great way to easily add a beautiful range of colours to a linocut. This project uses only two colours to create a range of shades, all in one printing layer.  We are using the jigsaw linocut technique to give us areas of different colours. We want our background to be …
  • What’s a Halftone? Screen Printing a Tonal Image

    What’s a Halftone? Screen Printing a Tonal Image

    People often want to screen print photographic images and hope to use black and white photographs for this. To do this you need an exposed screen. The way screen printing works is the mesh either has to be open or closed (ink passes through the open areas but cannot pass through the closed areas) therefore …
  • How Much Detail on Exposed Screens?

    How Much Detail on Exposed Screens?

    When designing artwork for exposed screens it can be very difficult to figure out what level of detail you can include. Different mesh counts will be able to handle different levels of detail. The mesh number relates to how many threads there are per cm of mesh: 32T has 32 threads per cm, 120T has …
  • Block Printing onto Fabric with New Textile Rollers!

    Block Printing onto Fabric with New Textile Rollers!

    We’re very pleased to have a brand new roller available for block printing onto fabric! We love using screen printing inks to block print onto fabric as it creates fast-drying washable prints. Screen printing inks are too slippery for standard rollers so up until now we’ve liked using Sponge Rollers to print our fabrics. Sponge …
  • Screen Printing onto Dark Fabrics with Yellow Ink

    Screen Printing onto Dark Fabrics with Yellow Ink

    In last week’s blog post we began looking at which inks were suitable for screen printing onto dark fabrics. We used three different screen printing inks and looked at the difference between standard and opaque inks when printing with white. All of the white inks printed well onto the black fabric – white inks are…
  • Screen Printing onto Dark Fabrics with White Ink

    Screen Printing onto Dark Fabrics with White Ink

    Screen printing onto fabric tends to get a little complicated as soon as you want to print onto dark coloured fabrics. Standard screen printing inks are translucent and will therefore show some of the base colour through when printed. When printing onto white or pale coloured fabrics this is not a problem. Most standard screen … Continue reading "Screen Printing onto Dark Fabrics with White Ink"
  • Using Different Tools to Make Marks on Lino

    Using Different Tools to Make Marks on Lino

    There are a large variety of different lino cutting tools with different shapes and sizes. The most common lino tools are V Tools and U Tools. U Tools carve softer lines with a curved end point and an even width but it can be harder to get control over the placement of your edges. V …
  • Using Red Masking Film to Expose A Screen

    Using Red Masking Film to Expose A Screen

    When it comes to screen printing there are so many ways to create your image. You can cut paper stencils, use Drawing Fluid and Filler, create exposed screens with hand drawn or computer drawn designs. Red Masking Film is a brilliant way of creating exposed screens. It’s transparent so can be used to trace over … Continue reading "Using Red Masking Film to Expose A Screen"
  • Which Inks Can I Use?

    Which Inks Can I Use?

    Knowing which inks to use for which printing project can be a minefield. There are different inks for screen printing, relief printing and intaglio. Some can be used for more than one technique, some are only suited to one. Some can be used for printing onto fabric, some only for paper. We’ve created a chart … Continue reading "Which Inks Can I Use?"
  • How to Screen Print with Paper Stencils

    How to Screen Print with Paper Stencils

    In this project we will show you how to screen print onto paper using paper stencils. With this method, you can print multiples of your designs in several layers of flat colour without having to make an exposed screen or using screen filler. When screen printing, ink is forced through a fine mesh onto a …
  • Getting a Drawn Design Ready for a Screen

    Getting a Drawn Design Ready for a Screen

    Screen printing is a brilliant way to make the most of your hand drawn designs. It enables you to print them multiple times for framed artwork or cards or to create your own fabrics, bags and t-shirts. You can use your designs to make into photographic screens yourself at home or we can make them … Continue reading "Getting a Drawn Design Ready for a Screen"
  • Printing a Solid Lino Block with a Baren

    Printing a Solid Lino Block with a Baren

    One of the hardest things to do when printing a relief block (lino, vinyl or wood) is to print solid blocks of colour.  There are quite a few choices to make and if you get these right then your printing will be much easier.  Ink – an oil based ink will print better than a …
  • Printing with the Xcut Xpress

    Printing with the Xcut Xpress

    The Xcut Xpress is traditionally used as a die cutting machine but has found a whole new life as a printing press! This small scale machine is portable, affordable and can produce amazing quality prints. We used our Xcut Xpress with Extended Print Bed and Felt to produce a linocut, a drypoint etching and a …
  • Testing the Differences Between Lino Blocks

    Testing the Differences Between Lino Blocks

    Here at Handprinted we are always getting asked to explain the difference between all the lino relief blocks available. It can be very confusing knowing whether to choose traditional lino or try an alternative such as Softcut or Vinyl. To help you decide on the right material for you, we’ve tested five different blocks in … "