Dusted off the screens

My entire summer break was filled with crafts. It was fantastic! I focused on resting and recharging through art and hardly even left the house. My motivation? Auntie Cheryl's birthday, of course!

The first project on the docket was a couple of screen printed shirts. I used to have a t-shirt business where I started out block printing onto shirts and later learned DIY screen printing. Traditional screen printing uses emulsions and chemicals and always felt a bit out of reach for me. I came across a tutorial one day that used a Cricut machine and heat transfer vinyl to create the stencils on the mesh screens--now that I could do! I had so much fun designing and making t-shirts, but struggled with creativity when my new job required an hour commute each way. I ended up closing up the Rou Rags shop in 2021.

In true crafter fashion, I did not get rid of any of my supplies. :)

In one of Tracie and Cheryl's cooking lives, Tracie started describing Cheryl as her "wife; not only her wife, but her bride..." and kept going on and on, ending with "baby mama." It was cute and funny and you can see a little clip here on their Instagram. As usual, the idea to turn all of these words into a hand-lettered design for a shirt suddenly popped into my head. The whole idea, all at once. All the words, hand lettered, screen printed onto sleep shirts, monochromatic color schemes, all just instantaneously existed in my brain.

The hand lettered design itself did take some work to make it pretty. I started out in Canva, but quickly realized that I wasn't going to achieve what I wanted without the complete creative freedom that I get in Procreate. I sketched out the words, making sure they all fit together nicely, then used a letter-builder brush to keep the letters uniform while drawing them. I usually leave hand lettering to Cortlan, the resident expert, but I really had fun with this and am happy with how it turned out.

I loaded the design into Cricut, let the machine cut it onto heat transfer vinyl, ironed the vinyl onto the fine mesh screen, pushed the screen into the frame, then taped up the edges. When I had Rou Rags, I screen printed a small logo onto the bottom of the back side of each shirt. Since I don't have a brand right now, I put my social media name, Sarah Rou. I am a monster who doesn't measure, so I eye-balled the center of the shirts to line up the screen, then pulled the ink across the screen with a squeegee. The ink was cured with the heat press and they were ready to go! A one-day project.

This was, by far, the easiest project of the summer. I'm so pleased with how they turned out and Auntie C loved them! (Spoiler alert: she loved everything)