It’s here! It’s here! Er, um, it’s there! It’s there!

So in earlier posts I said I would be hand screen printing our poster-sized invitations. I was so excited about it. I’ve wanted to learn to screen print for years and thought this would be the perfect project try.

I bought all my supplies (screen, ink, emulsion set, paper, squeegee) online, printed my design on a transparency, and set out learning to screen print. There are several ways to create your screen (stencil) but I decided that photo emulsion what best method for me because of the detail of the invitation fonts. I mixed the emulsion chemicals, prepared my screen by coating it with emulsion solution, and stuck in a dark place to dry. My first attempt was a partial success. I was able to burn the image of the bells and the large text, but not all of the smaller text. My second attempt wasn’t as good. I didn’t expose the dry screen to enough sun, so none of the invitation image burned at all. In my third attempt, I didn’t put enough emulsion fluid on the screen, so only part of the image came through.

After three attempts, I ran out of emulsion fluid. It was a few days before Christmas when I ordered more supplies. Because of our trip to Florida, the weather and the mail backlog, my supplies didn’t arrive until mid-January. After 4 more unsuccessful attempts to burn my screen, I decided I needed to face reality and seek out professional help. This was probably not the project for a first time screen printer. I had the paper and some ink, so all I really needed was the talent. I placed an ad on Craigslist (my savior) and got a bunch of replies.

After sorting through all the talented people, we went with Jamie at Midair Designs. Although it would be his first time really printing posters, we knew he would be great. He is a talented artist who focused on t-shirts and designing. And to be honest, we couldn’t beat his price. He cut the paper, provided ink and screens, and hand printed all the posters for less than $100! The actually total was about $103 but he said he messed up a few and gave us a 15% discount. Mr.PapayaDog picked them up last weekend and said they looked amazing! He even said the 5 or 6 that were “messed up,” weren’t really messed up and you could hardly tell. I am dying to see them!

Have you had to do a reality check on one of your DIY projects? How did it turn out? Did you just pay someone to do the work or did you change the style or idea of the project completely so you could still DIY-it?