[schizo]

Hello... I've never screen printed before, and I'm not looking to take up the trade, but I do have one personal little project I want to do, and so I'm hoping to get a little advice. I don't really know the properties of emulsion or the process..

I have a sweatshirt that I like, but there is one part of the screen print design that I really do not like, which more or less surrounds the part that I really do like. It's a black sweatshirt, and I was wondering if it's possible to hand-paint some black emulsion on top of the portion of the screen print that I do NOT like, to cover it up? Will the wet emulsion stick to pre-existing emulsion on a screen print? How will it hold up to normal wear and washing/drying? Is it more likely to easily come off since it isn't "embedded" in the fabric itself?

Would I use a fabric paint or other type of ink? I'm assuming it's OK to paint this by hand instead of using a screen, since it's just a solid color and no color separations or definitive images are necessary.

Any advice on how I might accomplish this would be most appreciated! Thanks..

 

[VinSanity]

re: Hand-painting ink to "fix" a t-shirt

If I understand you correctly, you want to cover up part of a design on your sweatshirt?

If so, then there is no emulsion involved. Just buy yourself some textile paint and paint something over it. You might want to find the most opaque paint possible.

Emulsion is a light sensitive chemical that is coated onto a screen and then exposed to UV light that "burns" an image/design on to that screen that then is used for printing

 

[schizo]

re: Hand-painting ink to "fix" a t-shirt

Gotcha.... thanks for the scoop!!

 

[VinSanity]

re: Hand-painting ink to "fix" a t-shirt

but as far as painting over an existing fully cured plastisol ink... im not sure how well it will bond.

If its a water based ink, I think you might be alright

 

[splathead]

re: Hand-painting ink to "fix" a t-shirt

If you really, really like your sweatshirt, you will leave it alone. Nothing good can come out of you trying to cover up a design.

 

[Solmu]

re: Hand-painting ink to "fix" a t-shirt

1) You're confusing ink and emulsion.
2) The shirt is likely to be printed with plastisol, which means the new ink won't cure to the old.
3) Screenprinting lays down a thin, even layer of ink. If you handpainted ink over the top of that, it would be really obvious that you had done so.