A Screen Printing Experience
10 April 2023
Recently, I’ve been trying to find ways to get into a good creative flow. I’ve attempted to paint more, embroider and most recent I’ve tried out screen printing with the help of some amazing friends. Screen printing is certainly a process and I only attempted half of it. I had help with burning the design into the screen and then I got to try out the actual printing portion.
This experience would have definitely been a more difficult task if it weren’t for the help of my friends who share a love for creativity and plants. These two pals of mine also run a small business called Urba Botanics, a plant business based out of Seattle. They have created such a wonderful online presence full of beautiful plants and some very cute monstera tote bags that caught my eye!
Their monstera totes were printed by them from their own home, an inspiration for me to try and print my own as well. I decided to reach out to them and get some help on creating my own tote bags. To prep for the our day of screen printing, they burned my mushroom logo into a screen and then they brought the materials over to begin the project.
We set up at my dining room table, laying out all the supplies and materials. Before we started to make the totes, we made some practice prints on a few pieces of paper. The practice prints turned out pretty cute and I can see some prints to be made in the future! After we figured out the perfect placement and got a few test runs out of the way, we started on the totes.
After about an hour or so, we had finished up my very first screen printed totes. We made only 5 to start and did only two colors, pink and black. Taking a look at the work my friends and I did together I felt so happy and proud. Being able to create alongside your friends is a wonderful feeling and seeing how cute the final product turned out was also very rewarding. I had such a fun time learning this new skill and making something new, I definitely will be doing more of it.
Screen printing also opened me up to the idea of block printing, creating my own stamps that can transfer on fabric or paper. Even though I enjoyed the screen printing process I think block printing might be more up my alley, but I’ll have to try to find out! This experience also helped me develop more product ideas and ways in which I want to expand my business. In the future, I’d like to be creating a variety of totes and some fun prints of some of my art work, and from there who knows what else I might want to try and make!
To wrap this post up I suppose I should point you in the direction of my shop page. I’ve posted the totes to my site and they are now available to purchase! You should definitely go check them out and see the final results. Also, make sure you check out Urba Botanics on Instagram @urbabotanics. They have amazing plants, plant care products and cute little totes that you must see!
Kabenzie :)