Hello! I’m back from my blog break — I made a lot of progress on the oversize print I wanted to work on last month, and I’m going to share that progress in this post.

This is an older post from early March 2020 that I’m republishing because I recently used my cotton candy screen, and I want to share how I made it. In the post below I mention that I just got a 355 mesh screen, and that’s what ended up having the best result. I burned that screen right before the stay-at-home order in March 2020, and I still use the screen when I need a cool background texture in a print.

While teaching a Youth Arts Alliance screen printing class this summer, I ran into two problems: one, the students really wanted to print t-shirts, but I hadn’t planned for that in the curriculum. I don’t have a t-shirt press and generally don’t (like to) print t-shirts anymore. The other problem was, what would we print? There were 8 students in the class, and it wasn’t going to be possible for everyone to print their own design.

AKA “Cedar Closet Darkroom”! Last week I made progress on putting together a screen printing darkroom in my basement, on a strict budget. It’s functioning now, and the out-of-pocket cost to get it going (not including emulsion) was $54.12. Here’s how I did it!

You only have one screen and you want to make a new print! Or you’re teaching a basic screen printing class and you want to keep it simple! But in either case, you want it to be more interesting! I have a fun tip for you!