Author: handprinted

As Halloween fast approaches, it’s time to get those costumes ready. We think it’s a perfect opportunity to try out Speedball Night Glo fabric ink! Print
glow in the dark Halloween messages, pictures, or even your kids’ spooky drawings onto their own costume. That will keep ’em busy this half term.

We’ve chosen to print a skeleton and here’s how we did it:

Start by drawing your design onto copy paper, making sure that it fits onto the surface of the top. We’re using a dark green school jersey – this project
is perfect for up-cycling your kids’ old worn out ones. The tattier the better!

When you’re happy with your design, cut it out using a craft knife or scalpel.

We also made an arm-bones stencil for the sleeves of our top on a separate sheet of paper.

Place a piece of newspaper inside your garment, just in case any ink goes through to the other side. Lay it flat on a slightly padded surface if you have
one. Place your stencil where you would like your design to be printed.

Tape up the edges of your screen on the front and the back of the mesh. Place the screen on top of the stencil. Make sure there are no gaps around the
edges of your stencil. If there are, add more more tape to the screen to fill the gaps.

Spoon a line of Night Glo ink along the top of the screen.

Use your squeegee at a 45 degree angle to drag the ink down the screen. This coats the mesh in a thin, even layer of ink.

Scrape any excess ink off the squeegee. Bring the squeegee back to the top and pull it down the screen, again at a 45 degree angle. The night glo ink is
pretty thick so will require a quite a lot of pressure to get through the mesh. You may want to get someone to hold the screen still as you will need
to use both hands on the squeegee. If you are printing with your kids, you might have to help them push hard enough on this bit.

Carefully remove the screen to reveal your print! Peel off the stencil and wash the ink out of the mesh straight away.

When your screen is dry, repeat the process with any additional stencils. We used our arm-bone stencil on each sleeve. Don’t forget to wash your screen
right away or the ink will dry and ruin the mesh.

Our finished skeleton top!

If you would like to have a go yourself (of course you do) you will need:

• Garment to print on (we used a dark green school jersey)
• Pencil or pen
• Craft knife or scalpel
• Cutting mat
• Screen with 43T mesh
• Parcel tape
• Squeegee
• Speedball Night Glo Fabric Ink

As Halloween fast approaches, it’s time to get those costumes ready. We think it’s a perfect opportunity to try out Speedball Night Glo Fabric Screen Printing Ink! Print glow in the dark Halloween messages, pictures, or even your kids’ spooky drawings onto their own costume.

We’ve chosen to print a skeleton and here’s how we did it:

Start by drawing your design onto copy paper, making sure that it fits onto the surface of the top. We’re using a dark green school jersey – this project is perfect for up-cycling your kids’ old worn out ones.

When you’re happy with your design, cut it out using a craft knife or scalpel. Remember that the cut out areas are the parts that will print.

We also made an arm-bones stencil for the sleeves of our top on a separate sheet of paper.

Place a piece of newspaper inside your garment, just in case any ink goes through to the other side. Lay it flat on a slightly padded surface. Place your stencil where you would like your design to be printed.

Use parcel tape to tape up the edges of your screen on the front and the back of the mesh. Place the screen on top of the stencil. Make sure there are no gaps around the edges of your stencil. If there are, add more more tape to the screen to fill the gaps.

Spoon a line of Night Glo ink along the top of the screen.

Use your squeegee at a 45 degree angle to gently drag the ink down the screen. This floods the mesh with a thin, even layer of ink.

When you reach the bottom, scrape any excess ink off the squeegee. Bring the squeegee back to the top and pull it down the screen, again at a 45 degree angle, pressing firmly this time. The Night Glo ink is pretty thick so will require a quite a lot of pressure to get through the mesh. You may want to get someone to hold the screen still as you might need to use both hands on the squeegee. If you are printing with your kids, you might have to help them push hard enough on this bit.

Carefully remove the screen to reveal your print! Peel off the stencil and wash the ink out of the mesh straight away.

When your screen is dry, repeat the process with any additional stencils. We used our arm-bone stencil on each sleeve. Don’t forget to wash your screen right away or the ink will dry and ruin the mesh.

Our finished skeleton top!

For this project you will need:

• Garment to print on (we used a dark green school jersey)
• Pencil or pen
• Craft knife or scalpel
• Cutting mat
• Screen with 43T mesh
• Parcel tape
• Squeegee
• Padded surface
• Speedball Night Glo Fabric Ink
• Spoon or spatula

It can be difficult to find the right inks for block printing onto fabric, especially if you haven’t got a few days to wait for it to dry. We have loved screen printing with Permaset Aqua Textile Inks, so we wanted to try block printing with them too!

You will need:

• Permaset Aqua Textile Ink
• SpeedyCarve
• Lino cutters
• Craft knife or scalpel
• Soft pencil, permanent pen and paper
• Inking tray or sheet of glass or perspex
• Ink spatula
• Piece of think felt or similar thick fabric slightly larger than your block. We used a heavy cotton wadding. You could also use a piece of foam.
• Tea towels or other fabric items to print
• Table salt

Start by making your blocks. We embraced the autumn and created a pretty two layer pine cone print! We drew around our template and cut the shape out of SpeedyCarve.

Carving around the edge of the shape with a thin lino tool first made it easier to follow the line with a scalpel.

We made two of these identical blocks for our two layer print.

Transfer the design for your second block onto the second piece of SpeedyCarve. We used the classic soft-pencil-scribble-drawing-on-the-back method seen here:

After the image was transferred, we used a permanent pen to make the lines more prominent before carving our block using a lino cutter.

Scoop out a small amount of Permaset Aqua onto you inking tray or sheet of glass. These inks are inter-mixable so create whatever colour takes your fancy! We used Mid Green mixed with Standard White.

Now for the clever bit: when you’re happy with your colour, sprinkle a few grains of table salt into the ink. As you mix it in, the ink should start to loosen up into a runnier consistency. Please only add a few grains at a time, not a liberal sprinkling as if you were trying to save a bland soup – you can always add more but you cannot take it away, as everyone’s mother once said.

This clever trick from Jezze Prints (who makes all kinds of beautiful things), creates an ink that coats the block in a lovely thin layer of ink without diluting the colour or affecting the colourfastness of the print. Nifty huh?

When you are happy with the consistency, which should be loose but not drippy, lay on your piece of felt or thick fabric. As you press the block onto the fabric a few times, the ink should begin to come through, and lo and behold, you’ve made a stamp pad.

You are now ready to print. Load up the block with a layer of ink and press it onto your fabric with the flat of your hand. We folded up the bottom of the tea towel to act as a guide to printing in a straight line.

Continue to load up the stamp and print in this way…

…until you have printed over the whole surface.

While this first layer dries, use the same method as above to mix up the ink for your second layer. We mixed Mid Green, with tiny amounts of Standard White, Black and Orange R to make this grungy darker green. Use a fresh piece of felt, or if you only have one piece, ring as much of the previous colour ink out. Don’t wash the piece of felt out at this stage or the water in the fabric will mix with the ink making it too runny. Press in your new stamp a few times, until only the new colour comes through.

Repeat the process as before. As the two stamps are the same shape, it should be easy to register the two layers.

When the second layer is finished, wash the ink off your stamp to use another day! When the prints are dry, iron the fabric on the reverse to set the ink.

Our finished tea towel!

It can be difficult to find the right inks for block printing onto fabric, especially if you haven’t got a few days to wait for it to dry. We have loved screen printing with Permaset Aqua Textile Inks, so we wanted to try block printing with them too!

You will need:

• Permaset Aqua Textile Ink
• SpeedyCarve
• Lino cutters
• Craft knife or scalpel
• Soft pencil, permanent pen and paper
• Inking tray or sheet of glass or perspex
• Ink spatula
• Piece of think felt or similar thick fabric slightly larger than your block. We used a heavy cotton wadding. You could also use a piece of foam.
• Tea towels or other fabric items to print
• Table salt

Start by making your blocks. We embraced the autumn and created a pretty two layer pine cone print! We drew around our template and cut the shape out of SpeedyCarve.

Carving around the edge of the shape with a thin lino tool first made it easier to follow the line with a scalpel.

We made two of these identical blocks for our two layer print.

Transfer the design for your second block onto the second piece of SpeedyCarve. We used the classic soft-pencil-scribble-drawing-on-the-back method seen here:

After the image was transferred, we used a permanent pen to make the lines more prominent before carving our block using a lino cutter.

Scoop out a small amount of Permaset Aqua onto you inking tray or sheet of glass. These inks are inter-mixable so create whatever colour takes your fancy! We used Mid Green mixed with Standard White.

Now for the clever bit: when you’re happy with your colour, sprinkle a few grains of table salt into the ink. As you mix it in, the ink should start to loosen up into a runnier consistency. Please only add a few grains at a time, not a liberal sprinkling as if you were trying to save a bland soup – you can always add more but you cannot take it away, as everyone’s mother once said.

This clever trick from Jezze Prints (who makes all kinds of beautiful things), creates an ink that coats the block in a lovely thin layer of ink without diluting the colour or affecting the colourfastness of the print. Nifty huh?

When you are happy with the consistency, which should be loose but not drippy, lay on your piece of felt or thick fabric. As you press the block onto the fabric a few times, the ink should begin to come through, and lo and behold, you’ve made a stamp pad.

You are now ready to print. Load up the block with a layer of ink and press it onto your fabric with the flat of your hand. We folded up the bottom of the tea towel to act as a guide to printing in a straight line.

Continue to load up the stamp and print in this way…

…until you have printed over the whole surface.

While this first layer dries, use the same method as above to mix up the ink for your second layer. We mixed Mid Green, with tiny amounts of Standard White, Black and Orange R to make this grungy darker green. Use a fresh piece of felt, or if you only have one piece, ring as much of the previous colour ink out. Don’t wash the piece of felt out at this stage or the water in the fabric will mix with the ink making it too runny. Press in your new stamp a few times, until only the new colour comes through.

Repeat the process as before. As the two stamps are the same shape, it should be easy to register the two layers.

When the second layer is finished, wash the ink off your stamp to use another day! When the prints are dry, iron the fabric on the reverse to set the ink.

Our finished tea towel!

I don’t know about you, but thanks to years of being in school followed by forever being surrounded by children and teachers, Autumn will always signal the beginning of my year and a time to learn something new. This year’s September-knowledge-thirst led me to a weekend-long batik course run by Noel Dyrenforth in Hove.

The course was organised by Angela Lenman and was full of passionate batik artists, all with more skill and experience than I…

Over the weekend we worked on three batiks, using a variety of traditional and more experimental techniques. Below are some pictures I snapped along the way to give you a feel of what we got up to.

First we drew our designs onto cotton and stretched it onto frames. I used a
castellated frame as it meant I didn’t have to make one the right size (it also was a little easier carting it on the train from Chichester)!

We used Procion MX Dyes mixed with soda ash to fix the dye. Here is the fabric after the first layer of turquoise dye:

We used a blend of beeswax and paraffin wax which gives you the right amount of crackle whilst staying smooth. Here is my first batik after the next layers of waxing and dyeing:

As it turns out, making a batik has a lot to do with being patient. If you put the hot wax onto dye that is not completely dry it will not penetrate the fabric and wont resist the next layer of dye properly. Thank goodness for cold hairdryers and cups of tea.

The last layer of dye after a final hefty waxing.

We all used Tixor Malam Batik Pots (Guild members were bringing them in by the box-full) which seemed just the right size for a honey coloured pool of wax that lasted the entire weekend.

The second batik we worked on gave us the opportunity to play with a lovely range of Procion MX Dye colours.

Throughout the weekend we used a variety of tools to apply the wax; from Javanese Tjantings to kitchen roll and decorators brushes (natural bristles only unless you want to end up with a melted plastic blob on the end of a stick). One batik artist even broke out a Kistka in order to achieve even more detail whilst we all ooh-ed and aah-ed.

I was particularly proud of this juicy looking pomegranate, drawn with a Size 1 Tjanting:

We ironed the batiks between sheets of newspaper to remove most of the wax, but they will need to be dry cleaned or boiled to remove the rest. The dark blue marks around the fruit below are where the ironed wax has melted and spread and will disappear after the fabric has been cleaned.

Etching into the wax was another technique that was new to me – using a tool to scratch into the wax creates details that the final layer to dye can pick up.

Below is a batik created by a fellow batik enthusiast – far from the fiddly white-outlined paintings often associated with batik!

My final splashy, dynamic batik, created by splattering and brushing on wax between four layers of dye.

The weekend’s most important lesson from Noel: If you’re wondering whether to create movement, dynamism and expression with wax or dye, it should always come from the wax.

Lesson learned.

If you fancy having a go yourself, information about the Batik Guild can be found here and lots of lovely batik supplies can be found on our website.

We thought it was about time to write a blog showing you how to make this funky rainbow spiral tie dye T-shirt. They come out slightly different every
time so once you’ve made one, you’ll want to make one hundred. It’s that addictive. Here’s how:

You will need:

• White cotton T-Shirt
• Large bowl or bucket
• Elastic bands
• Soda ash
• Cling film
• Procion MX dye in Lemon Yellow,
  Magenta, and Bright Turquoise
• Clothes peg
• 3 squirty bottles
• Metapex or non bio detergent
• Rubber gloves
• Funnel
• Measuring jug and measuring spoons

Start by prepping your T-Shirt. Lay the shirt out flat on a table. Use a clothes peg to pinch the middle. Make sure that the peg holds both the front and
the back of the shirt. Using the peg as a handle, start to twist the shirt. Try to get fairly even peaks and troughs: if you get any mountains of fabric,
just tuck them in. 

When your shirt is twisted into a vaguely round shape, use elastic bands to hold it together.

Use three bands over one another to create six segments.

Soak your shirt in a solution of warm water and soda ash. Use 1tbsp of soda ash for every litre of water. For just one shirt, we used two litres. Soak
the shirt for at least fifteen minutes.

Whilst the shirt is soaking, prepare your dyes. Add 1tsp Procion MX dye to 200ml warm water. We recommend that you wear rubber gloves as the dyes will
stain!

Use a funnel to decant the dye into one of the squirty bottles and shake to mix.

Repeat this for the other two colours of dye.

Your six segments are going to form a colour wheel. Each of your three primary colour dyes will be squirted into three of the segments. Every other segment
will have two dyes squirted into it, creating a secondary colour!

After your shirt has finished soaking, squeeze out any excess water and lay it onto a piece of cling film.

Take a bottle of dye and squirt your first colour into three of the segments (half of the shirt). Turn over and do the same on the other side.Wipe any
excess dye off the cling film. You don’t want your shirt sitting in it or the colours will mix.

Next, take the second colour. Squirt into three segments, starting with the last segment of the previous colour. Wipe down the cling film again.

Finally, take the third bottle and squirt into the final three segments. Make sure you have put all three colours on both the front and back of your shirt.

You should end up with a wheel of shirt that looks a bit like this! The dyes will start to mix and you will begin to see the orange, green and purple segments
appearing.

Wipe off any excess dye again, and wrap the shirt up in the cling film. Leave for 24 hours for the dye to set. Don’t be tempted to move it around too much
or the dyes could mix!

After 24 hours (well done for waiting, we know it was tempting), unwrap you shirt and, leaving it tied up, rinse in cold water until it runs clear. Remove
the elastic bands and wash with Metapex or non-bio detergent (if using a machine, please run on the hottest wash with detergent and an empty drum before
doing your next load or prepare to have multicoloured socks).

Here is our finished T-Shirt!

One of the best things about screen printing is that it allows you to print onto almost any flat surface! This week, we have been using Speedball Acrylic Screen Printing Inks to print on this gorgeous 1960s coffee table. Here’s how to do it:

You will need:

• A table top, side board or whatever piece of furniture with a flat surface that needs jazzing up
• Wire wool
• A printer and OHP film (make sure the film is compatible with the type of printer you have!)
• Screen (we used an A3 90T Aluminium Screen)
• Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion, Sensitiser and Remover
• Coating Trough
• Speedball Acrylic Screen Printing Inks
• Squeegee
• Parcel Tape
• A hairdryer
• Clear spray varnish

Print out the design for your table top onto OHP film (make sure that the OHP you buy is compatible with your type of printer). For our two-layer screen
print, we printed out two separate layers of OHP. You want the design to be solid black so that no light can be seen through. Here is what our design
looks like when the two layers are laid on top of one another: 

Next, prepare your screen. Wash the screen to make sure there is no dirt or oil on the mesh. When it is dry, it is ready to coat. Fill the Sensitiser bottle
half full with water and shake until all the crystals have dissolved. Add this solution to the Photo Emulsion and mix well until it is one solid colour
throughout. Pour some of the mixture into your coating trough. Tilt the coating trough against the mesh at the bottom of the screen. 

When the Photo Emulsion has reached the mesh all the way along, drag the trough up the screen to coat the mesh. Use the trough to scrape off any excess
and use a rag to wipe off any thick lines around the edges. You can decant any excess emulsion from the trough back into the bottle for another
time.

Put your screen in a dark place, such as a cupboard, to dry horizontally. The air needs to circulate around the screen so prop up the edges with blocks.
This will take a few hours or overnight.

When your screen is dry, you are ready to expose your image. We have used our beloved new exposure unit in our studio, but you can find instructions
on how to do this at home here. We expose our screens for five minutes in our exposure unit or for fifteen minutes with a 250W lamp. 

When your screen is exposed your image should look paler than the space around it. Wet both sides of the screen, then use a powerful jet of water to
wash the unexposed emulsion out of the mesh.

When it is all washed out, you should be able to see light through it, like this: 

When the screen is dry, tape up the edges on the front and back, so that there is no open mesh anywhere other than your design.

To prepare our table for printing, we scrubbed it all over with wire wool, to give the surface a key, and to remove any flaky varnish. We then cleaned
and dried the surface.

For a repeating pattern like ours, start printing at one end. Raise the other end of the screen up to the same height as the table top with blocks
or sponges. Our table top can be unscrewed from the legs (hooray for clever 1960s designs), so we could place our table top on our print table.
If you cannot separate yours from the base, get a helpful person to hold the screen in the right position while you print.

Put a line of ink across the top of your design and use the squeegee at a 45 degree angle to pull the ink through the mesh. We used Speedball Acrylic
Screen Printing Ink in Peacock Blue.

Quickly dry the print a little with a hairdryer. You want it to be dry enough so that it will not be smudged when placing the screen back on top. Don’t
leave the screen for too long though, as the ink will dry in the mesh and be impossible to wash out!

When the ink is touch dry, place the screen back on top for the next print. You can see through the mesh to check you are putting it in the right place.

Repeat the same process until your first layer is complete!

Leave this layer to dry. Meanwhile, wash your screen thoroughly to remove all the ink. When both the screen and the first layer of print are dry, you
are ready to print the second layer. We are using black.

Repeat the same process as with the first layer, looking through the mesh to align the design and drying each print slightly before moving onto the
next.

To block off any areas that you don’t want to be printed, use some newsprint. We wanted one section of our print to be red, so we used newsprint to
block off the the rest of the design.

When your print is thoroughly dry, coat it in a layer of clear spray varnish. This will help the surface to be a little more hard wearing.

Here is our finished table!

We have been enjoying the sunshine here at Handprinted so we thought we would show you how to make a Summery top out of an old plain T-shirt using Colour Magnet and Procion Dyes!

You will need:

• Light coloured T-Shirt
• Fabric scissors
• Pencil, paper and a fine paint brush
• Screen
• Parcel Tape
• Drawing Fluid
• Screen Filler
• A squeegee
• Colour Magnet
• Procion MX Dye
• Soda Ash
• Rubber gloves and an apron – these dyes stain
• Elastic Bands
• A plastic bag or cling film
• A plastic jug or bowl and measuring spoons
• Metapex or non-bio detergent

You can cut your T-Shirt into any shape and style you want – we chose to make a racer back top! Here’s how we made it:

Cut the sleeves and the collar out (we gave the back a V neck) and cut a strip off the bottom hem all the way around – don’t throw this away! Then shape
the bottom into a curve. 

Use half of the strip you cut off the bottom to tie the sleeve holes together at the back and use the other half to make two ties at the shoulders. This
will make a racer back shaped top with a slash neck – much better for summer than a boring T-shirt.

Next, you need to decide what image or text you want to go on your top. Colour Magnet is a dye attractant that creates a two toned effect when dyed – what
you print in Colour Magnet will appear in a darker shade to the rest of the fabric.

We were on a Summer high so decided on a summery quotation on ours!

Draw your image or text onto a piece of paper and trace it with a pencil on your screen (right side up).

When your drawing is done, elevate your screen above the table (we used pieces of packing foam but anything will do). You don’t want the mesh touching
the table top or it will mess up the next part.

Use Speedball Drawing Fluid to paint in the parts that you want to be printed with Colour Magnet (the bits you want to appear darker on the fabric).

Wait for it to dry…

When the Drawing Fluid is completely dry, tape up your screen around all the edges with parcel tape on both sides of the mesh. This will stop anything
getting through where you don’t want it and stop you from wasting the Screen Filler by filling the mesh where you don’t need it.

Spoon some Speedball Screen Filler onto the top of your screen (make sure that it’s still elevated or you will have a lot of cleaning up to do). Use the
squeegee to pull the Filler down the screen. You don’t want any gaps or they will show up when you print. The Drawing Fluid will resist the Screen
Filler and show through.

When this is completely dry (we left ours overnight but a couple of hours should be fine), wash the Drawing Fluid from the screen. It should wash out really
easily with a bit of water pressure but you can use a plastic brush to lightly scrub out any stubborn bits.

Leave your screen to dry (or dry it carefully with a towel) and your screen is ready to print!

Put some newspaper or card in between the layers of your top and make sure it is flat – we untied the knot at the back to get it even flatter. We also
taped it down to the table with masking tape so it didn’t shift about too much.

You can print with the Colour Magnet just as you would with screen printing inks. Blob some along the top of your screen (warning: it is extremely gloopy),
and use your squeegee to drag it down the screen onto the fabric.

Press hard. The Colour Magnet is really thick and so will take a bit of pressure getting through the screen. You may want someone to hold the screen still
for you whilst you print.

When you lift up your screen you should see a faint pale yellow print of your image.

It is very pale but it’s there!

When the Colour Magnet is dry you are ready to dye. Tie up your top in any way you want with elastic bands. We gathered up our printed section and tied
a band around it to create a circle. We also added a band around the bottom edge. Remember, the section printed with Colour Magnet needs to get to
the dye, so it’s not a good idea to put lots of rubber bands through that section – the dye just won’t reach.

We used the Rapid Dye method with Procion MX dyes in Blackcurrant. Dissolve 1/2 tsp of dye (we are using a strong colour so 1/2 tsp is plenty) into 100mls
of warm water. Separately, dissolve 1 tsp of soda ash in 50mls of hot water. The soda ash will fix your dye. Mix these two solutions together and use
straight away (the mixture will lose its ability to react with the dye over a period of 1-2 hours).

This method is very simple and quick! 

We have been enjoying the sunshine here at Handprinted so we thought we would show you how to make a Summery top out of an old plain T-shirt using Colour Magnet and Procion Dyes!

You will need:

• Light coloured T-Shirt
• Fabric scissors
• Pencil, paper and a fine paint brush
• Screen
• Parcel Tape
• Drawing Fluid
• Screen Filler
• A squeegee
• Colour Magnet
• Procion MX Dye
• Soda Ash
• Rubber gloves and an apron – these dyes stain
• Elastic Bands
• A plastic bag or cling film
• A plastic jug or bowl and measuring spoons
• Metapex or non-bio detergent

You can cut your T-Shirt into any shape and style you want – we chose to make a racer back top! Here’s how we made it:

Cut the sleeves and the collar out (we gave the back a V neck) and cut a strip off the bottom hem all the way around – don’t throw this away! Then shape
the bottom into a curve. 

Use half of the strip you cut off the bottom to tie the sleeve holes together at the back and use the other half to make two ties at the shoulders. This
will make a racer back shaped top with a slash neck – much better for summer than a boring T-shirt.

Next, you need to decide what image or text you want to go on your top. Colour Magnet is a dye attractant that creates a two toned effect when dyed – what
you print in Colour Magnet will appear in a darker shade to the rest of the fabric.

We were on a Summer high so decided on a summery quotation on ours!

Draw your image or text onto a piece of paper and trace it with a pencil on your screen (right side up).

When your drawing is done, elevate your screen above the table (we used pieces of packing foam but anything will do). You don’t want the mesh touching
the table top or it will mess up the next part.

Use Speedball Drawing Fluid to paint in the parts that you want to be printed with Colour Magnet (the bits you want to appear darker on the fabric).

Wait for it to dry…

When the Drawing Fluid is completely dry, tape up your screen around all the edges with parcel tape on both sides of the mesh. This will stop anything
getting through where you don’t want it and stop you from wasting the Screen Filler by filling the mesh where you don’t need it.

Spoon some Speedball Screen Filler onto the top of your screen (make sure that it’s still elevated or you will have a lot of cleaning up to do). Use the
squeegee to pull the Filler down the screen. You don’t want any gaps or they will show up when you print. The Drawing Fluid will resist the Screen
Filler and show through.

When this is completely dry (we left ours overnight but a couple of hours should be fine), wash the Drawing Fluid from the screen. It should wash out really
easily with a bit of water pressure but you can use a plastic brush to lightly scrub out any stubborn bits.

Leave your screen to dry (or dry it carefully with a towel) and your screen is ready to print!

Put some newspaper or card in between the layers of your top and make sure it is flat – we untied the knot at the back to get it even flatter. We also
taped it down to the table with masking tape so it didn’t shift about too much.

You can print with the Colour Magnet just as you would with screen printing inks. Blob some along the top of your screen (warning: it is extremely gloopy),
and use your squeegee to drag it down the screen onto the fabric.

Press hard. The Colour Magnet is really thick and so will take a bit of pressure getting through the screen. You may want someone to hold the screen still
for you whilst you print.

When you lift up your screen you should see a faint pale yellow print of your image.

It is very pale but it’s there!

When the Colour Magnet is dry you are ready to dye. Tie up your top in any way you want with elastic bands. We gathered up our printed section and tied
a band around it to create a circle. We also added a band around the bottom edge. Remember, the section printed with Colour Magnet needs to get to
the dye, so it’s not a good idea to put lots of rubber bands through that section – the dye just won’t reach.

We used the Rapid Dye method with Procion MX dyes in Blackcurrant. Dissolve 1/2 tsp of dye (we are using a strong colour so 1/2 tsp is plenty) into 100mls
of warm water. Separately, dissolve 1 tsp of soda ash in 50mls of hot water. The soda ash will fix your dye. Mix these two solutions together and use
straight away (the mixture will lose its ability to react with the dye over a period of 1-2 hours).

This method is very simple and quick!