This part blows, trust me. You will need to get a hold of either an Excto knife, box cutter, mat knife, or Stanley knife. Basically, what we‘re looking for here is a knife that has a blade sharp enough, strong enough, and small enough to cut out little details in your design, without massacring the material you are cutting up.

Now onto the material; I am still experimenting with materials, but up to this point, I have found that nothing achieves greater detail, and strength than those acetate sheets you put on light projectors. You can find these at office supply stores (staples, office depot, etc…), schools, maybe around your house even, they are pretty inexpensive.

Okay so you have three things at this stage:
A) A sweet design, in the style of stencil (this is important for the printing process)
B) Some killer acetate for cutting your design into a stencil
C) A sharp-ass knife for cutting

Now align the acetate sheet on top of the design and secure it with either 4 staples in each corner or my personal favorite method: painters tape on all four sides, as shown:COMMENCE STENCIL CUTTING

Ok so now you’re done cutting your stencil and if you didn’t rage on your design during the cutting process it should look like this when finally cut out:

It’s a mess, I know. But, if you look close enough you can see the faint outline of the cut out design on the acetate. Oh PS: that green thing is a cutting mat purchased for a dollar at the dollar store. They help a lot, and prevents the blade from dulling.

Okay now the hard part is over people. Lets take a moment to chill, and reflect upon what we have created. After all you know hold in your sweaty hands a vessel that can be spray painted on walls, inked on paper, painted on shirts, and chalked on streets. You have a piece of art.

Let’s investigate phase two:

Now grab yourself a nice shirt to print on, mine is black, size M. Always prewash the shirts, so they shrink, this is important as you don’t want the print getting FUBAR’d.

Now find a flat surface to print on I used my kitchen table, as it is always clean, this way I ensure that no dirt/dust/food/grease or anything else gets on the shirt. After all, people might actually purchase what you are making here.

Ok so lie the shirt down on the table and insert a piece of cardboard into it. This is a cautionary method so the paint does not seep through the fabric of the shirt to the other side.

Once the shirt is all nice and pretty like, and the boards in it, you have reached the printing stage. YEAH! w00t!

In order to get the stencil to stick to the shirt there are a couple of methods, you can go about:

A) Use some more of that painters tape and just tape the stencil to the shirt. Much like you did when you attached the acetate to the paper, when you cut it. However, this method is not the best as the stencil has a tendency to move around when you paint it and then you get over prints, and smudges (your worst enemies). But when your in a bind it works, or if you don’t have the supplies for the next method.

B) This is the method I used; it is very efficient and works multiple times. You will need a can of spray on adhesive for this one. What you do is, spray on the adhesive to the back of the stencil and let it sit for a couple of hours. I know this is a long time, but you want the glue to be tacky, not sticky so it grips the shirt, but comes off when you need it off, and leaves behind no residue.

While your stencil is drying, go find your self some fabric paint. I used some white fabric paint I bought a Michaels, its white, and its matte. In my opinion glossy fabric paint is not the way to go, as it looks shitty on a shirt, but that’s just me. Here is the bottle I bought, use it for reference when you’re perusing the local arts and crafts store:

kk, so the stencil is ready, the paint has been bought, the shirt is on a nice clean surface. In military terms you are now officially “locked and loaded” werrrrd.



TIME TO PRINT THAT BAD-DADDY

Now when it comes to printing there are several techniques you may want to consider, Using fabric paint like above, squirt a decent amount of paint on any blank space of the stencil. This will act as your reservoir. From here you can take an old brush like the one pictured below, and using a dabbing motion, slowly fill in the whole stencil. As an alternative you can also brush on the paint, but be careful with this method as smudging is common place. In addition to these two methods you may also wish to roll the paint on with a small paint roller. Personally I have tried both brushing and dabbing and I find a dabbing motion is good for very detail stencils and a brushing motion is good for big and simpler designs.

So… what are you reading this for still! Start slopping on that paint, man!



Once you are done peel off the stencil and you should have a show-stopping, face-melting, heart-sploding, kick ass T-shirt design. The stencil will most likely look a little something like this when it has been used:

Covered in paint, and a little tacky on the back (notice the blurry white speckles on the stencil, this is the glue residue).

Just a side note when you look at the print on the shirt it will not be 100% opaque, this is normal, not to worry, it is because a light colored paint ondark fabric does not show up well unless it is screen printed in which case you are using completely different inks. If it is really bothering you then you can try to re-register (place) the stencil on top of the print after it has dried and try and do a second layer, but chances are it will end up out of line, and therefore wreaking your shirt.

Here is the final result, or what mine looked like at least.

Detail shot of the design; notice the overprint to the left and the smudging of the spray paint cap. Watch out for this! I shit you not it will happen to you at least once, so try and do a couple of test prints before the good copy.

OK so you’re done! Its over! W00t! Hellz yeah, you have now officially printed your first T-shirt. I’d pat you on the back but I probably don’t know you, and you probably wouldn’t like it if a random person came and gave you a hearty pat on the back so I will just congratulate you on a hopefully job well done.


OH WHOA. ALMOST FORGOT THIS:

I cant stress this enough, you have to let the shirt dry for 24 hours (1 day), once it is dry you cannot wash it for another 72 hours (3 days). When you go to wash the shirt make sure it is turned inside out. Make sure you use mild soap and the water is not to hot. Then don’t throw it right into the dryer after the wash cycle let it air dry. You will want to revisit these same washing instructions for approximately the next 2 or 3 washes, or until you feel that the shirt is ready to be tossed around with the rest of the laundry.


HAVE FUN KIDDEIS!! MAKE ME PROUD!



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