Blog - Tutorials

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 …

We often talk about creating digital images to make exposed screens but there are a lot of ways to use hand drawn designs that bypass the need for computers at all – hooray! Grain Mark Screen Film allows you to draw directly onto a screen film whilst maintaining all your lovely textural marks. Charcoal and … Continue reading "Screen Printing Hand Drawn Designs with Grain Mark Screen Film"

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 …

Akua Carbundum Platemaking Gel is a great new product that allows you to make high contrasted, textured intaglio plates. The gel can be screen printed onto a plate and printed with Akua Intaglio Inks. Drypoint Plastic makes a perfect plate with a wipe-clean surface.   To make our own Caborundum Gel plate we used an … Continue reading "Making a Carborundum Gel Plate"

When we think of screen printed artwork we tend to see bold areas of bright colour and graphic lines but there are lots of different styles that can be achieved. By using graphite directly onto the mesh of a screen we can create loose, printed sketches that can be used for layering or as prints … Continue reading "Screen Printing a Graphite Drawing"

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 …

When we first heard the news that Tetra Pak cartons could be used for printmaking, we were excited to try it out. We started to collect all the cartons we had at home and got ready to put them to a new use in the studio. Here’s a little project to get started using Tetra … Continue reading "Tetra Pak Drypoint and Collagraph Printing"

There are several waxes that can be used for making batiks, all of which will produce slightly different results. Standard Batik Wax is a blend of beeswax and paraffin wax but soya wax makes a good alternative. Soya wax is more sustainable, plant based, natural and petroleum free wax. Our soya wax comes from renewable…

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 …

We are thrilled to have Cranfield’s new Traditional Relief Inks in stock. Cranfield make the hugely popular Caligo Safe Wash Inks. These new traditional relief inks are oil based, highly pigmented and come in a wide range of colours including gold and silver! We couldn’t wait to get our hands on that gold. Take a …

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 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"

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 …

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"

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?"

With our Christmas Makers’ Market and our Christmas Fab Friday Workshop on last week, we’ve been getting in the festive spirit here in the Handprinted Studio. Our Fab Friday workshoppers printed sheets of wrapping paper that would add charm to any present. Here is a quick design we whipped up for the occasion that can …

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 …

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"

There is something really compelling about miniature objects. A miniature print sounds just too good to be true. Don’t worry about carving tiny detail – this project will shrink it down for you! Start with a sheet of Shrink Art Plastic – we’re using white. Cut out your desired shape with scissors or using a … Continue reading "Printed Shrink Plastic Keyring"

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 …