New Project (and completed project): Screen-Print Canvas Tee

So around 11:00 the other night, I got an excellent idea. I understood what was going on with screen printing, since I'd by this time done it before with proper equipment in Graphic Arts class (project that i turned in today yay). Anyway, I took a gray tee shirt I hadn't worn in about two years, and my small bottle of white screen printing ink that I'd bought awhile back and never used (smaller than a bottle of tacky glue. $10. A little goes a long way). I wrapped the tee around my old laptop, the one with the broken monitor, putting the side I would be printing on face up. This was a little tricky because I had to make sure I didn't stretch the fabric in the process. To create the effect of a painted-on canvas, I threw formality to the wind, and just dumped about half the bottle onto the shirt, starting from about a fist length down from the collar. Using a folded piece of paper, I spread the ink out into a rectangle. Then came the interesting part. I had WAY more ink than I needed! I took down the REM New Adventures in Hi Fi wall scroll i have hanging up in my closet, since it's held up via a triangular piece of wood. I used that piece of wood as an edge, and placed it at the top of the print area. Then, I took a scrap of cardboard, folded it in half, wrapped a piece of paper around the fold to keep it smooth, fashioning myself a sort of squeegee. Finally, I took the squeegee and pushed all the excess ink up against the wood. I then scraped the edge of the bottle up the wood to collect the excess ink, and repeated. Squeegee, collect, squeegee, collect, until the print was nice and smooth. It still looked a bit thick, but any thinner and I wouldn't be able to write on it when I was done. I then collected the ink from the squeegee and excess pieces of paper. The canvas look was naturally achieved during squeegeeing since I didn't put down any tape (a mistake regrettable at the time but that I now realize was a blessing), and because I kept wiping my fingers on the edge of the shirt.
Finally, I propped the laptop covered shirt upright once it had dried a little, and blasted my fan on it, then promptly passed out. After school the next morning, I came home and ran a hair dryer over it for about five seconds over each section of the ink it covered. This heat seals it so that when you write on it in sharpie/magic marker, the marker will wash off, but not the canvas. I am currently wearing it. It looked great with just the canvas, actually. Then I added, "Dear Cullens, Piss off, you posers. Also, don't mate with your food. Sicko. -Dracula"

Pictures and instructions to follow.