Cookie Monster tee for my little man.

Hi guys, today I've been busy making a stencil for and printing a couple of cookie monster t-shirts for my boy so I thought I'd jump on and share the process with you!

What you need:

• paper with picture you want stenciled (one page per colour, mine has two!)
• cutting mat and cutting tool
• screen and squeegee (you can easily knock up a screen using an old timber picture frame and monofilament (a fine mesh picked up from art stores) tightly stapled around)
• screen inks (I used blue and white to mix up the right colour and black)
• newspaper
• masking tape
• knife

Step 1.
Print the design you want to screen on to your fabric (t-shirt) or alternatively draw your design.  * I just typed cookie monster into my search engine and saved the image I wanted then printed two copies (or as many as the colours in the picture you are using) making sure they were the right size for my t-shirt.

Step 2.
Using the utility knife and cutting mat, cut the pictures up according to colour.

 I marked my pieces for black and blue

Step 3.
Using the blue stencil first, tape the stencil to the flat side of your screen

 Fill in the rest of the area with newspaper so as the ink won't be printed in unwanted areas

Step 4.
Place newspaper on the inside of your t-shirt so as ink can't pass through to inside and back of shirt, then place the screen, stencil side down on t-shirt so as the picture is in the correct position to be printed.

Step 5. Mix up the colour you need using your inks then spread onto your squeegee with a knife.

This is an old photo as I forgot to take photo of this step!

Step 6.
Scrape the ink over the top of the screen in all directions then use more of a scraping motion to remove excess ink.

Same as last, silly me!

Step 7.
Carefully remove screen from the top of the t-shirt and admire your print.

Then its clean up time! Luckily these inks are water based and was cleaned easily with cold water and a soft cloth.

If second colour is required, wait until ink is dry and repeat process with next stencil and align over previous print.  Once all ink is dry, your prints need to be heat set using an iron.  Times required for this are on the labels of the screen inks.

In the end I printed two t-shirts for Sam and two onesies for my grandson, a black one and a coloured for each! You've got to make sure you get the most from your stencil while your doing it as they are not reuseable!

Happy screenprinting!