My love of punk means ever so often I get the desire to design my own T-shirts. Problem is I can't seem to get a method that actually works. So far I have tried-

Commercial inkjet T-short transfers you print your design onto. They fade loads and have a tendency to peel. The transfers for white/pale colour clothes are quiet good but I don't wear those colours.

Acrylic paint + a binding substance (can't remember what it was). Was really versatile with a nice finish but just doesn't survive a 40 degree wash.

Material pens, same problem as the paint and with a weak scrawley finish, limits successful designs.

Strange gutta type outliners. Pearlescent colours, pretty tough but prone to pealing. Looks better on bags than T-shirts. As with pens anly using an outline limits designs and it doen't look very professional.

Oh and I tried stitching/ applicé but it took waaay too long. I haven't tried spray paint as I don't have the appropriate safety equiptment (ie an open space!).

So does anyone have any ideas about a new method I can try? I have honestly run out of ideas.

Cheers! :D

Hi, templelane!

We may have just the person on this site who could advise you in how to be successful with applying art of some kind on t-shirts, and that would be jrebel7! I will let her know about your post so that the two of you can discuss this.

Hey there Temp-
I have had good success in painting on t-shirts, jeans, etc. with two kinds of paint. One is called puffer paint. You can mix it with acrylic. After it dries, you apply heat and it rises a bit (puffs out). I have a t-shirt I did for my daughter when she was little and it was washed many times, and has been worn by grands also now. Still nice.

I mainly have used just acrylic paints. I have a few suggestions and you may have already done this and not found it helpful but worked well for me. After I have decided what I want where, I mix colors (tube paints work best rather than the little craft bottles because the tube colors are thicker in consistency which you can thin down to a wash if necessary). I put a stiff card board between the front and back of t-shirt to where it stretches the material just a bit (not enough to distort what design I want but to open up the material) I sometimes also place a tea towel or paper towel on the cardboard just to absorb excess coming through the back so it doesn't end up coming back up through in a place I don't want it to. LOL I use a relatively stiff brush and work the paint into the material. Once that is done, you can add paints on top of that surface for effect but I work with it quickly as acrylics dry fairly fast. I have never had any peel or fade. For me, I believe it is the working of the paint (using just a little thicker paint than the craft bottles of paint), into the fabric that has made mine have staying power. Hope this helps in some way! If I can find photos of some I have done, I will post later but who knows when I might run onto them but I promise I will try. Happy Painting. :)

Thanks, I'll try acrylic again and work the paint in more- I was just stipling in on before and it just didn't survive the wash. I do use paint form the tube but they are getting on a bit so perhas I should try some new ones.

That puffer paint sounds really interesting- do you know who makes it so I can see if I can order it off the internet?

Thanks again, both of you :D

Just so you know, both jrebel7 and I are normally on here late at night between 10:00 and 2:00 P.M. Central Standard time in the U.S. if that is a help for you.

Hi Templelane,

How do you paint the acrylic on T-shirts?

Have you tried painting in white acrylic first(as a base) and then waiting for it to dry before adding other colours?
I do that, in fact I am wearing one I made during my pregnancy and it has been more than two years since then and the colour is as good as I first painted them.

Or you could cut out the design you need in white transparency sheets,and stencil the design in white acrylic then add the colours you need later.

Hope this helps a bit.

Jan has some good suggestions there.:)

Yeah, I did white first for one of my designs but the others were just black so I didn't bother. I use Daler Rowney perhaps there are not the best make for this? Or perhaps it was the material I was painting on? Actually just checked that it says 100% cotton! Hmm I'm perplexed now... Maybe I wash stuff too often, I always wash T-shirts after one day and I don't have that many so I will wear the same thing over and over again.

What I really want to try is screen printing but I have yet to get the starting materials. It's so much harder to acquire the right equipment when you're not at college anymore!

It's good to know it can work, I think I'll get to tweaking the method. Right I'll check the type of acrylic and try to work the paint in more. I've got a plan for the design so I'll try it tonight if I can find a T-shirt. :)

You need to learn about Screen Printing. You can set up a simple and relatively inexpensive apparatus to bring your ideas to life. Once you've done that, you can make as many as you want and sell them if you like. A phone call to a local screen printer may prove beneficial. Ink selections include Plastisol, the aforementioned "Puff" ink, or perhaps a flock adhesive. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask.

I don't have a local screen printing service as I live in the back end of nowhere, what would I need to set up at home? Do you know of any good companies to get suppies from? I am quiet interested in this method as I did it at school and it would definitely work with my design ideas as they are mostly two tone graffic affairs.

I think you can educate yourself with some simple searches about screen printing methods. You did say you've done it before. Basically you need a wooden frame with a multifilament polyester screen mesh stretched accross(real mesh not curtains). You need hinges to raise and lower your screen. If you do a short run you can use spray glue to hold your substrate in place(in this case a t-shirt). You'll want a mesh with 60 to 150 threads per inch. You need a squeegee about a foot long. You need an apprporiate ink. I suggest plastisol. You need an appropriate thinner for the ink. You need a way to make a stencil. This can be hand-cut or photosensitive emulsion pressed into the mesh. I don't recall the product name, but you'll probably want to use water soluble emulsion and blockout to mask your image. If you want to skimp on all that, use masking tape and paper stuck to the underside of the screen with the ink. You can get a couple of good prints with that in a pinch if it can be cut. I don't know where you live, but if you're in Canada call (ND Graphics - 416-663-6416 4309 Steeles Avenue West , North York , ON M3N 1V7) They'll probably make your screen and squeegee for you and ship it to you. They supply everything you need. They used to be really generous with the samples as well. I hope this helped. Best of luck.

Heya
Sounds like an awesome idea, putting stuff on t shirts
I have never tried screen printing on shirts, but trust me, screen printing is easy :) a child could screen print :) so don't be afraid to try it :)
Good luck :)
Maybe later you can show us the shirts you make in the art thread :)

That would be cool, since we would greatly enjoying seeing your artistic endeavors in that regard! :)

Maybe you should try it before you form an opinion.
Screen printing or serigraphy is the oldest method of printing dating back thousands of years in China. Modern screen printing is a complicated endeavour. It isn't quite as simple as you seem to think. While a child may be able to pull a squeegee, there are in fact several disciplines involved. It is a combination of art and science requiring skill and experience. Applications for screen printing are quite diverse and only limited by your imagination. I've spent a lifetime in the Graphic Arts and I take exception to the notion that it's child's play. I suggest you do a little research and try it. You'll see. The more you learn, the more there is to learn. Graphic Arts are constantly evolving. It's all about the expression of ideas--communication, much more than just stuff on t-shirts.

Cal, I always appreciate your positive attitude and sweet spirit. You are a great encourager. I have never tried screen printing and as with all arts or crafts, there are many dimensions and the more you do a craft or work in the fine arts, the deeper one can take it and it does evolve but because of your belief that we as artists on this thread should at least try it for the experience, I believe I will give it a try! Goodness knows I have tried many mediums and I don't excel in most of them, but sure have a great time on my journey! Thank you for encouraging and believing in us.

Below, are a couple of sites that actually show the process of screen printing on t-shirts.

screen printing process explained - sell custom screen printed t-shirts. PrintMojo - Take The Next Step

YouTube - Learn how to screenprint your own t-shirts

Hey, thanks templelane! I don't have all the answers to questions. But, I do like to help out where I can!

Barclay, I wasn't bagging screen printing or saying its simple, just saying that it is easy to learn, I'm 16 and I have done it, didn't take me too long to do it lolz.
I'm saying its easy to learn, I didn't say its easy to master.

Hey there Templelane! Something kept nagging at me in the back of my mind when I wrote the process I used to paint on the fabric earlier. It hit me that I did use heat to set the paint, after it had dried really well, using a cloth between the iron and the painted area.

You may be familiar with Jo Sonya Textile Medium but if not, you might try it. You mix it with the paint, paint your fabric, allow it to dry and use a heat set of 250 degrees on your iron, placing a cloth between the iron and the painted fabric as I mentioned above. I have not used the Jo Sonya Textile Medium but a friend of mine had good luck with it. With the puffer paint I mentioned, you also use heat of course to puff it up. You can even use a blow dryer like you would use on your hair to make it puff.

Have you decided to hand paint or do the screen printing? I am anxious to see what you come up with. I have some photos of some things I did that seems like centuries ago on fabric. The ones I used the paint in several coats, did eventually show some cracking of the paint, not noticeable except to me but it came after a couple of years or more of wear and washing and wearing but I hang up a lot of my clothes out of the washer, rather than putting them through the dryer. I will post images later if you would like. As I said, I did these years ago and nothing like you are talking about like Punk but the technique would be the same.

I'd really like to see your work jreble! I didn't heat set any of the stuff I did- perhaps that is the missing step. I don't know when I'll get to do any T-shirts at the moment, life just keeps getting in the way. I'll think I'll use just acrylics again, I'd love to do screen printing again as I used to be good at it but I just don't know how to get the equiptment. A while back there were some screens in a skip (they had holes) thrown out from the art school I was going to salvage but someone else got there first.

If I made my own wooden frame what fabric are you supposed to stretch across? I've completely forgotten.

"I'd really like to see your work jreble! I didn't heat set any of the stuff I did- perhaps that is the missing step."





Hi there Templelane!

I will post a few images I found. Like I said, these are archaic but I haven't painted on fabric in years so "don't laugh" too hard at the subject matter or my style. Hopefully, I have improved in my art through the years! I do think heat may be the key we visited about on the earlier posts.

When I paint on glass, I put them in a low setting in the oven also which makes me believe using the heated iron with cloth between would set the paint. Maybe that is why my colors did stay true. Hope this helps.

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