Screen Printing Shop Tour
Handmade Business Studio Vlog | Revival Ink Shirts
Screen printing shop tour! Even though I work from home, I've been printing over 13 years, and have a professional shop set up in my basement that can output several hundreds of shirts per day!
Before we start I want to mention the cool t-shirt I'm wearing -- this is Murder Paws! It was inspired by my cat. It's a pretty fun shirt for crazy cat lovers. You can get yours here.
Now I'm going to take you on a tour around my screen printing shop. Let's start over here; these are the shelves where all of the shirts are when they're printed. You can see the little labels there all of my shirts, these are ones that are printed and ready to go, these have little notes for things that still need to be printed, these shelves are just all full of all the shirts that I make for you guys.
Over here is the screen printing press number 1.
I will be printing a shirt for you all on here at the end of the show today. 
These are all my shelves where I keep my supplies for sewing, screen printing, and crafting.
I also make headdresses as a hobby. These are some of my headdresses. I like to store them on little heads. I will be making some headdress tutorials on my youtube channel soon.
Here you might recognize some of the necklaces I made from the tutorial videos that I've been posting. This one's got some cool lights on it. This is one of my favorite artists Keeley Dolan when I had monster art and clothing she was a guest artist there. Over here I have some more art from Henry another one of my favorite artists and right in front of him is a small little 3d printer. Yes! That is a unicorn horn on there.
Here is my big light exposure table. This is how I expose the screens. It's full of light bulbs. To make a screen, I must do it in the dark, because the emulsion I coat on to the screen is photosensitive. I tape a stencil with my art on the screen, and place it on top this light table for about five minutes to cure the design on to the screen. These are UV bulbs and they glow purple in the dark. That is how you exposes the emulsion, similar to developing photographs.
These are just some of my scissors and tools that I don't like to lose. Up here are the things that I stick into the screens while they're setting on the table. The screen needs to be completely flat otherwise the image won't expose quite right so I put those inside the screen and then I put wheat on top of it.
On a roll-out table is my glowforge laser cutter, you can see it has this little exhaust thing, this goes all the way to the outside of the house because when you're cutting acrylic which is the main thing (I like to cut with this) there are some dangerous fumes involved so I'm putting those outside is good. Over here we just have some blank screens that are ready to be coated up. Here we've got more storage, and my Cricut vinyl cutter.
Here you'll see my little photo studio, this is where I film all of my DIY tutorials I have been making on t-shirt reconstruction.
Check them out my youtube channel!
Last night I filmed the video on how to make this type of shirt. This is my assistant Francesca she lives down here in the basement she loves it.
Behind this little curtain, this is the washout booth, so once I have exposed a screen using that light table, while I am still in the dark, I bring it over here and I use the pressure washer to wash it out. Then that leaves behind only the design all of the areas wash out and it leaves that and then I can print with it.
This gray thing here is a light safe storage shelf. Once my screens are coated but they have not had an image exposed to them yet, I can store them in this for up to six months, and then I just expose the image on to them once it's ready and I've made a transparency of it.
Now we'll come through the hallway another tripod. Yes, I work in a basement those are the stairs to go up and also it's a laundry room washer and dryer suitcases this is where I hang my kid's shirts. Coming over here we have my little bathroom and washout area for the screens. This is how I store the squeegees, that's the little bathroom and sink area.
Over here is my Epson workforce printer it prints up to 13 by 19 and size and that's how I print the transparencies for all of my screens and then I cut them out here on this table lots more scissors and cutting things there. This is where I store a bunch of my screens that are already made once they're cured they're light safe and they can be out and I keep them around the shop for when I reprint things.
All the rest of this is more shirt storage, so many shirts are all the ones I keep one of each size on the hanger so I always know what my inventory is like and then all the extras go into the bin.
Then this is press number 2, and where I store all of the ink. I have two presses because normally this time of year my assistant Lisa and I would be very very busy printing up huge wholesale orders for local Seattle stores and festivals. But, since they are all closed right now and there are no festivals we are not down here printing anything. In fact, I haven't seen Lisa in about a month and I miss her.
This is the conveyor dryer. Once I print an image onto a shirt using the press, I put it on the end of the conveyor dryer here and it rolls through. With forced-air hot heat it cures the shirt.
That is the tour of my basement workspace and I wanted to thank all of you for joining me! I am going to be screen printing a shirt here in a little bit, so I'm going to get set up and then start another live video for that.
Thanks again ❤️
