Welcome back to the craft room and today’s post, World’s Tallest Leprechaun Screen Print Shirt. As I mentioned in last Monday’s post, St. Patrick’s Day Lucky Shamrock Card, I love celebrating my Irish heritage. We as a family also celebrate our son’s half birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. Every year we buy him a fun new t-shirt but this year is a little different. Rather than buying a decorated shirt, I decided to make it myself! With the many different crafting techniques already at my fingertips, I chose to try something completely different this time; screen printing. Let me tell you all about it.
Speedball Screen Printing
My venture into screen printing started last year. I purchased the Screen Printing With Craft Vinyl kit by Speedball and Jennifer Sanderson of Pigskins & Pigtails for a potential project with my sister. That didn’t pan out, so the box sat unopened for a long time. When it was time to make our son’s St. Patrick’s Day shirt, I decided it was time to give it a try.
This kit comes with everything you need to create your first screen printing project. From the vinyl to a sample size tub of ink, the only thing missing is your creativity. Speaking of the sample size bottle of ink, in this particular kit, the ink is red. Of course, that color didn’t go with the idea in my mind, so off to the store to purchase a bottle of Speedball black fabric ink. Also included in the kit is a small screen print frame with a usable space of 8” x 10”. This was a little small for a large t-shirt, so I also purchased the Speedball 10″ x 14″ frame with a usable size of 10” x 14”.
The idea behind screen printing with craft vinyl is simple. Using your favorite vinyl cutting machine, in my case the Cricut Air Explore 2, find and cut an SVG image as you would for any vinyl craft. The resulting piece of cut vinyl is now the stencil that will be attached to the back of the screen that the ink will be pushed through. Let’s start with the image.
World’s Tallest Leprechaun
To find the perfect image to use I headed off to my favorite site, Creative Fabrica. There are so many amazing images and fonts, it was difficult to choose just one. However, the search was over when I ran across the SVG file World’s Tallest Leprechaun by mottakinkha1995.
In Cricut Design Space, I adjusted the size of the file to fit onto a size large t-shirt. Because we are creating a stencil, I also added a box around my image to make the weeding, as well as the stenciling process easier. As you can see below, the image on the right is the original design with the box surrounding it. In the image on the left, the two pieces are attached together so the Cricut will know to cut the design and the box outline from the vinyl on the mat.
When it’s time to weed the vinyl, rather than removing the background, we are removing the parts of the image we want painted. In the image on the left you can see the stencil attached to the back of the screen. In the image on the right, you can see the next step in the process which is to cover any open areas of the screen with painters tape.
The Printing Process
Because this was my first attempt at this craft, I forgot to take pictures along the way. I will however, create another post and share the entire process with you. I can offer you the short version today. After the screen is taped off, align it on the shirt, centered and about 2 – 3 inches down from the collar. Add a good amount of Speedball fabric ink to the screen above your design. Holding the screen with one hand, bring the ink down to the bottom of the design with the provided squeegee. Remember to only drag the ink in one direction. Repeat the process until the entire image has been inked, adding more ink if needed. Any extra ink on the screen can be Scrapped off and returned to the jar. When finished, hold the shirt down with one hand and remove the screen to relieve your masterpiece.
It is important to let your project air dry for 12 to 24 hours to allow the water in the ink to evaporate. If you are impatient, you can speed the drying time with a heat gun or hair dryer. After it’s completely dry, you will need to heat set the ink. I used my HTVRont Auto Heat Press set to 320 degrees for 40 seconds.
Our son absolutely loved his new shirt! He did have one suggestion – add Ireland’s flag! I only own black and red screen print ink, but I did have green, white, and orange heat transfer vinyl. So, I added a small flag to his sleeve as an additional nod to our Irish heritage.
Thank you for joining me today’s World’s Tallest Leprechaun Screen Print Shirt post. Have you given screen printing a try yet? If not, you totally should! It is so satisfying when the screen comes up and your idea is perfect. Join me in the near future when I will be adding a post with a more detailed description of my screen printing process. Until then, have a wonderful week ahead and I will see you back in the craft room again soon!
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