Too much of a ‘good thing’ can be, well, too much!

I was recently on The Martha Stewart Show showing her how to silkscreen and we had an oops moment. I didn’t mention it on air. I didn’t want to call attention to it because it was TV and really we had to keep moving! But I thought I should call attention to it for my readers. What happens when you use too much pressure with the squeegee? Well, it turns out that too much is, well, too much. If you press down too hard with the squeegee you can actually STRETCH the screen fabric underneath and cause your image to distort. That will make your colours not meet up. You might never notice it if you print just one colour but in a two colour print you’ll see the problem right away. Screen printing is part art and part craft. It’s easy to learn but it might take some time to get it just right. So if you are printing and your colours don’t match up once printed check to see if you might be pressing too hard. It’s an easy fix! Happy printing.