Paper Stencil Screen Printing

My Hubby and I are taking an Indie Art Class at SCAD as our date night and one of the things we did was some power screen printing.

We were working start to finish in a 2 hour class so I cut out insects using out AccuCut to make stencils for the screens. We were kinda on fire, we made about 10 yards of fabric and 4 tee shirts for my oldest (wee one had already grabbed her American Apparel shirts and they were nowhere to be seen the night of the class).


Here are some super simple instruction (with the assumption you have screen printed previously and own a screen)

Cut out your stencil, we used standard issue white art paper from Dick Blick. The areas that are paper will block the ink. Try not to make your self crazy with really complicated designs.

Lay your stencil down on a trash surface (newspaper)

Lay your screen on top of your stencil

Put ink in the top area of your screen

Squeegee your ink down ( I make 2 passes). The ink will hold your stencil in place.

Carefully pull up your screen (this is easier if you have it in a hinged screen printing holder)

Toss your trash paper and place your tee shirt or fabric down on a slightly padded surface (for tee shirts make sure you have a barrier between the front and the back so the ink does not bleed through)

I have made 15 passes with the paper stencil before it starts to degrade. The best thing about paper stencils (and what we were doing during our power print class) is that you can change them out really fast, just pull the paper off and lay down a new stencil. Keep your colors similar or change them slightly and then clean it all up when you are done. We had a blast and I can't wait to try again.