smithjohnj
Sr Member
Tulip Puffy Paint / "Screen" Printing
I also tried the Tulip Brand Puffy paint as an early test for the pant legs. Also long ago and far away. The fact that I still have this test piece laying around my workroom is a testament to my lousy housekeeping – I mean organizational skills.
The results first. The Tulip Puffy Paint can give you a very dimensional look. The kind I tried did dry glossy but I believe there is also a Matte version which might be better. I only tested this paint a few times so I do not have much experience but I did learn a few things
.
I tried one sample with just a one-pass of the squeegee which did not “fill” the full depth of my card-stock stencil, and the other was a “two-pass” stroke recommended in some screen printing sources which filled the stencil and set the depth of paint to the depth of the stencil material. In the first test I left my stencils taped to the fabric until the paint dried. The one pass did not provide full coverage. The two-pass (and cardstock) was probably too thick. When I removed the stencil in the second case, it pulled up and chipped the paint because the paint bonded to the stencil edges of the untreated cardboard cardstock. The biggest complaint I had from all my limited stencil testing was the top edge of the rectangles always turned out too sharp. I was hoping for a softer rounded over edge. Also I did not have any luck when I tried to sand the edges to round them over (the paint is too “rubbery”) and three laundry cycles did not damage the paint but it did not wear the edges like I was hoping either.
In a another test, I used a thinner plastic stencil, did a two-pass squeegee on the paint and then lifted the stencil. In that situation the paint oozed out of shape and did not hold the crisp shape I wanted. I was not using anything like a “print frame” so the stencil was not tight enough to the fabric to work properly.
That is as far as I have taken these tests. But there are a few more tips. My test is Green because when I went to buy the Puffy paint I could buy a kit of 6 colors cheaper than buying just two; Black and White which were included in the kit but in an only slightly smaller size. The kit also included Yellow which I thought would be useful if I ever got around to the jacket sleeves. I can confirm you can easily mix the Black and White Tulip Puffy to obtain a full gray scale range for the pants. Yellow with the other primary colors and Black and White gave me a wide range of sleeve color possibilities but I only mixed a few drops at a time and did not have any specific color I was attempting to match.
I made my second template out of a stiff flat plastic sheet. It was something which came in a mailed advertisement. If anyone needs to make large or multiple stencils for anything of this type, the plastic “For Sale” signs you find at the hardware store for less than $2 work really well in my opinion. However the slick surface of the plastic does not make a good contact with the fabric without some pressure around the edges like a frame would provide and I think that is the reason the paint oozed.
If I were to try again I think I have two possible methods of improvement. First add a print frame for my plastic stencil to give me better contact to the fabric and prevent any bleeding. This would be important if I wanted to do multiple “prints”. For a one-off like I expect for the pant legs I might try to cut my stencil from one or more layers of blue painter's tape. It would provide a good "seal" at the edges, I could have some control over the depth of the paint, and the tape is formulated to reduce the paint adhering and chipping when the tape is removed.
Also some people have talked about purchasing a "screen printing kit". I would not discourage that, but I can add one thought here as well. The primary reason to have a fabric or "screen" all across a print frame is to provide the pressure I mention above especially if you are trying to print a large design, but also to support any parts of a stencil which need to maintain their position but are not connected to rest of the stencil The pants and even the sleeves are actually small so pressure is not a big issues if you do a little more work than I tried to get away with. The best example of the second issue is trying to screen print the letter "O", there is the part outside the letter and then the circular part inside the letter. A fabric screen holds the two parts of the stencil in the right position and let the ink/paint flow through filling the open space between with "black". With a simple cutout shape like a rectangle you really do not need a screen as the stencil can be cut out from a single piece of paper/cardstock/plastic. In this case two small squares in a larger piece of stencil material. You can try your skills without much investment beyond the ink/paint.
If anyone has their own experiences or takes this forward I would also be interested their results
EDIT: For small designs like the rectangles an old credit card or something similar works fine as a free squeegee.
I also tried the Tulip Brand Puffy paint as an early test for the pant legs. Also long ago and far away. The fact that I still have this test piece laying around my workroom is a testament to my lousy housekeeping – I mean organizational skills.
The results first. The Tulip Puffy Paint can give you a very dimensional look. The kind I tried did dry glossy but I believe there is also a Matte version which might be better. I only tested this paint a few times so I do not have much experience but I did learn a few things
.
I tried one sample with just a one-pass of the squeegee which did not “fill” the full depth of my card-stock stencil, and the other was a “two-pass” stroke recommended in some screen printing sources which filled the stencil and set the depth of paint to the depth of the stencil material. In the first test I left my stencils taped to the fabric until the paint dried. The one pass did not provide full coverage. The two-pass (and cardstock) was probably too thick. When I removed the stencil in the second case, it pulled up and chipped the paint because the paint bonded to the stencil edges of the untreated cardboard cardstock. The biggest complaint I had from all my limited stencil testing was the top edge of the rectangles always turned out too sharp. I was hoping for a softer rounded over edge. Also I did not have any luck when I tried to sand the edges to round them over (the paint is too “rubbery”) and three laundry cycles did not damage the paint but it did not wear the edges like I was hoping either.
In a another test, I used a thinner plastic stencil, did a two-pass squeegee on the paint and then lifted the stencil. In that situation the paint oozed out of shape and did not hold the crisp shape I wanted. I was not using anything like a “print frame” so the stencil was not tight enough to the fabric to work properly.
That is as far as I have taken these tests. But there are a few more tips. My test is Green because when I went to buy the Puffy paint I could buy a kit of 6 colors cheaper than buying just two; Black and White which were included in the kit but in an only slightly smaller size. The kit also included Yellow which I thought would be useful if I ever got around to the jacket sleeves. I can confirm you can easily mix the Black and White Tulip Puffy to obtain a full gray scale range for the pants. Yellow with the other primary colors and Black and White gave me a wide range of sleeve color possibilities but I only mixed a few drops at a time and did not have any specific color I was attempting to match.
I made my second template out of a stiff flat plastic sheet. It was something which came in a mailed advertisement. If anyone needs to make large or multiple stencils for anything of this type, the plastic “For Sale” signs you find at the hardware store for less than $2 work really well in my opinion. However the slick surface of the plastic does not make a good contact with the fabric without some pressure around the edges like a frame would provide and I think that is the reason the paint oozed.
If I were to try again I think I have two possible methods of improvement. First add a print frame for my plastic stencil to give me better contact to the fabric and prevent any bleeding. This would be important if I wanted to do multiple “prints”. For a one-off like I expect for the pant legs I might try to cut my stencil from one or more layers of blue painter's tape. It would provide a good "seal" at the edges, I could have some control over the depth of the paint, and the tape is formulated to reduce the paint adhering and chipping when the tape is removed.
Also some people have talked about purchasing a "screen printing kit". I would not discourage that, but I can add one thought here as well. The primary reason to have a fabric or "screen" all across a print frame is to provide the pressure I mention above especially if you are trying to print a large design, but also to support any parts of a stencil which need to maintain their position but are not connected to rest of the stencil The pants and even the sleeves are actually small so pressure is not a big issues if you do a little more work than I tried to get away with. The best example of the second issue is trying to screen print the letter "O", there is the part outside the letter and then the circular part inside the letter. A fabric screen holds the two parts of the stencil in the right position and let the ink/paint flow through filling the open space between with "black". With a simple cutout shape like a rectangle you really do not need a screen as the stencil can be cut out from a single piece of paper/cardstock/plastic. In this case two small squares in a larger piece of stencil material. You can try your skills without much investment beyond the ink/paint.
If anyone has their own experiences or takes this forward I would also be interested their results
EDIT: For small designs like the rectangles an old credit card or something similar works fine as a free squeegee.
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