Learn how to screen print and make your own t-shirts

As I mentioned in the last post, there are free tutorial videos and photo series on the internet with overviews on how to make your own t-shirts, but they'll mostly be brief summaries, or speedy skim-overs. Great for ideas and inspiration. That might be all you need for certain techniques, but if you're interested in learning how to screen print, you'll probably find that you need more in-depth instruction. The best way to learn how to silk screen is to take a course or buy a good book or instructional DVD. It will give you much more guidance with slow and detailed step-by-step lessons.

I hope to develop my own videos one of these days, but for now, I'll recommend a couple of books you can buy.





And this one is specifically about creating and altering images in Photoshop to use for screen printing:



If you buy one or two good books or DVD's, you'll be ready to get started. Set up your own mini studio at home and make your own t-shirts using the method that looks the best and lasts the longest. Learning how to screen print is fun, useful and potentially profitable too. I really hope you enjoy it!

Make your own t-shirts: Silkscreening basics

Okay, this is just the beginning of Screen printing posts. It's an easy skill to learn, but it's definitely not a one-post project. If you want to make your own t-shirts using screens, you'll have to get the right materials, and practice. Just to get you a little excited about the things you can do with the technique, watch this great video from the guys ant Make Zine. It goes very fast, and is certainly not the best one for step-by-step instruction, but it's fun and inspirational. Check it out!



If you're a beginner, and need to be walked through it a bit more try this screen printing tutorial on Instructables, or for a more in-depth look at how to make your own t-shirts, buy a good book. There's loads of them out there. This is a pretty good one:



Enjoy!