Screen Printing: How to Prepare a Stencil

In this video tutorial, learn how to transform your drawing into a stencil - so it can be transferred onto your screen and printed with your screen printing kit.

In screen printing jargon, a Stencil is simply a transparency onto which you transfer the image you want to screen print.

There are several ways of doing this.

Clearly, the simplest and most basic is to use the printer you have at home.

You probably know that there are two types of printer: inkjet and laser. The same goes for transparencies: there are inkjet transparencies and laser transparencies.

There's a little trick to recognizing them:

• Inkjet transparencies always have a grainy side that can be identified by touch, and it's on this side that you'll need to print.
• Laser transparencies, on the other hand, are smooth on both sides and can be printed on in either direction.

Here's a little tip for making a correct Stencil at home, even on cheap printers: simply print your logo twice and superimpose them to obtain a very opaque Stencil, then simply apply a little tape to fix them in place so that they don't move when exposed to the sun.

For those who don't have a printer at home, an alternative solution is to simply draw on the transparency using a marker pen.

For those who do have a printer but no transparency, there's also an alternative solution: oiling a blank sheet of paper. This process enables you to obtain a translucent sheet that's not totally transparent, but it will let the light through during the exposure phase.

Note that those techniques remain far less precise and efficient compared to a proper printed transparency.

Now that you've correctly prepared your stencil using the technique of your choice, the next step is to prepare the screen to accommodate the design.