(What? Friends sometimes take 5 years in between posts).
My dad gave me an Ikonart stencil kit for Christmas. Which is a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle. Or Newcastle giving coals to its children for Christmas. But only if its children weren’t on the naughty list? Something like that.
(It’s been 5 years, give me some time to figure out my metaphors).
Anyways, it’s true that the daughter of a screen-printer has better access to custom t-shirts than your average bear. But it’s also true that 1) I absolutely love a mixed-media craft project and b) the last time my dad used factory resources for one of my quilts, it was a baby quilt for my nephew who is now approximately 17 feet tall and trying to decide where he wants to go to college.
Which is all my roundabout way of saying, thanks for the printing kit, Dad! A++++ present. Would unwrap again.
The Ikonart kit comes with a bunch of different tools and materials for doing your own screen-printing, but the most important part is photo-sensitive stencil sheets and a UV light. You print your design(s) out (they sent sheets for both laser and inkjet printers), lay them on the stencil sheet, expose them using the light, spray them with water to get the stencil to form, let the stencil dry out, and then hit it with the UV light again to make sure that everything is fully baked.
That’s a lot of typing, but it was pretty easy (once I got the hang of it). You can make a stencil in less than an hour, and most of that is dry time (aka you can do other things while you wait). It was easy enough that LJ made her own stencil, although I handled the UV light and the water spraying. Safety… at least second. Or third.
I spent this past weekend making stencils and printing with them on random stuff I had cluttering up my craft room. I got a bit obsessed with making different designs (LJ did as well!). In fact, I made so many, I ran out of the laser printer sheets that were included in my kit. I’m now anxiously awaiting my next fix a restock. It took me until my very last sheet to realize that I should have been taking the extra time to make multiple prints on each piece, instead of centering them like some sort of laser printer sheet heiress.
I managed to mess my first stencil up pretty badly by using a low-res image and not fully reading all of the directions. Once I realized that there was actual helpful information on the Ikonart website, I found a better version of the image I was using, and made a nice, crisp stencil.
I then proceeded to learn absolutely nothing and winged it when making my first print. And it looked commensurately terrible
????
I like how they give best practices, but are also realistic that not everybody has access to a professional-grade heat press. I’d say they know their audience pretty well, because a lot of their recommendations (like using a Cricut easy press to set textile prints) were for things I already had in my craft room.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? It took me all of 20 minutes to read the Ikonart 101 posts and actually learn how to do things correctly. Seriously. Informative stuff, and bite-sized enough that even an overly-caffeinated crafter in the middle of an ADHD hyper-focus (such as yours truly) should be able to read everything in one go.
I made a few onesies (shhh, don’t tell my new nephew), a couple of t-shirts, and I got some seriously crisp prints on spare fabric that I’m going to use to make snarky throw pillows.
I’m super excited to experiment with printing my own fabrics for sewing projects, to make obnoxious t-shirts for all of my friends, and to print on pastry boxes for when we give the gift of baking (I made a couple hundred macarons as Christmas gifts, I should probably post about it). I’m sure there are a million other things I’ll make as well, but that seems like a pretty good start.
Thanks, Dad!