How to Profit from DIY Screen Printing

Screen printing is very in demand for many types of media. Those who love to screen print as a hobby can very easily turn it into a career with very little effort. The most obvious media is clothing. People are always on the look for stylish but unique clothing that is not mass produced, and creating your own clothing line that provides them with such designs can quickly become a success. Another very popular option for screen print is screen print art. This can be done on canvas or cloth and is meant to hang on walls. The possibilities in whatever media you choose are virtually endless, but where should you start?

The most important thing about trying to profit is to get your name known. First around your community and town, and then you can grow the circle as wide as you like. Craft fairs are a good idea to help you with this, but don't wait around for them if they only happen once a year in your town like they do in mine.

Find businesses that allow local artists to display their art. Better yet, if you print your designs on clothing, there are some clothing stores that will partner with you to sell your things. They will get a part of the commission, but you will get great exposure. If you are simply hanging your work in a local café, be sure to include information on how to get a hold of you, such as a picture frame with your information in it.

Join with charity groups. Join with a charity group and put some of your work up for charity auctions. You will most likely not make a profit from this venture, but you will get exposure and your name will be seen in a more positive light. Great options for this are church charities or children's charities. They are wonderful causes, and you'll be happy you did.

Set up your own artist "break out" party. This is a unique way to make profit that artists around my community have done. Select a public location like a park and get permission to use the area for a day. Then get together with a few of your friends that are artists. They don't need to do the same kind of art as you, variety is a good thing in an event like this. Then make fliers that advertise the event and also call out to other artists in the area to get a hold of you if they'd like to participate. This event should be free, and everyone displays their work in their own space and way. This creates a free and fun community event, and gives you and other artists the chance to get their work known and who knows, maybe even collaborate and come up with even better ideas for exposure.

The key to success in any art business to supply what people want and to get involved with the community. Once you've established yourself in these ways and have seen some profit, then you can scale up to larger ventures. To try and open a store or website before you are well known anywhere is to work backwards. It is not impossible to do, but it is much, much harder.

The Pros and Cons of Screen Printing

One of the most common topics that comes up when considering screen printing is in which cases it is more useful than other methods of printing, such as digital printing or offset printing.

Screen Vs. Digital Printing 

Screen printing is a manual process which involves extensive setup in preparing the screen for printing designs. It requires a greater investment of time and resources in order to setup for a screen printing run than it does for digital. Furthermore, you need to use a different screen for every color used in a design - and screens can't be reused for another design.

When is Screen Printing Advantageous?

At first glance, you may be wondering how this could possibly compete with the more modern process of digital printing.

How can a manual printing process which requires a more time and resource-intensive setup up be advantageous to its digital counterpart?

Print Quality

There are certain types of jobs that, believe it or not, can be done much more efficiently with screen printing.

For example, you are able to get higher quality prints for jobs that require detailed color contrast and/or bright colors.

Job Size

Aside from difference in quality, the size of the print run is a great determining factor in which method to utilize.

Digital printing takes the cake when it comes to short print runs. With there being no investment required for the digital printing setup process (which isn't much more than file prep), it's the cost-effective option for low volume print jobs.

However, when it comes to bulk orders, screen printing actually becomes the more cost-efficient alternative. Why? Digital printing has fixed pricing (the amount of ink being used, equipment runtime, etc.). As the number of prints go up, the average cost per print does not start to drop.

On the other hand, more prints produced used for a single screen makes the cost of large volume jobs much lower. The bulk of the cost in screen printing is the initial setup, which becomes relatively smaller when talking about bulk orders.

So to sum up, digital printing is best for short runs while screen printing is best for bulk orders (when considering job size alone).

So there's the basic rundown of when screen printing is advantageous over digital printing. Leave a comment below if you have any questions or comments!

What is Screen Printing?

What is Screen Printing?

Screen printing is a method of printing commonly used for bulk orders of printing custom images on fabric. Not to be mistaken with DTG (Direct-To-Garment) Printing, screen printing involves the use of a thin mesh screen to transfer ink to the desired surface.

The first step is to create a negative of the image you want printed on clear film, using black ink that will completely protect the covered areas from UV light exposure. This film is then placed on your mesh screen.

For each color being used in the design, a separate screen must be prepared. Once that's taken care of, an emulsion is applied which will harden during the exposure stage to create the stencil itself.

Place each screen into a UV exposure unit, take them out and wash off the emulsion. At this point, you'll have a screen stencil with the design being the only area on the mesh screen which will allow ink to pass through.

The next step is to place the screen (or screens if you are using multiple colors) onto the T-shirt or other printable material and then to roll ink over the screen. The areas of the screen that weren't affected by the UV exposure, because they were covered by ink on the negative, will not let ink through.

You are left with your printed design!

Ballard Screen Printing Introduction

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I created the Ballard Screen Printing Blog, because I love working in the screen printing industry and enjoy writing. I figured it would make sense to combine the two and give myself some place to write about screen printing.

Full disclaimer: I'm not an expert in the industry by any means; I own a small family run print shop, and we are happy with the success we've had. I'm not here to be your new printing business guru, but rather to write some informative/entertaining content related to the printing industry. I hope you enjoy the posts to come!