Archive for 2010

The "I ♥ Sooki" Project

14 December 2010 § 0

The "I ♥ Sooki" Project was conceptualized by me and the wife. It's main aim is to, aside from professing our undying love for our daughter Sooki, be able to give Christmas gifts to people at minimal costs. Yes, we're cheapskates.

This project is to copy the design of "I ♥ NY" shirts but instead of the "NY" part, we change it to the word, "SOOKI."

To go about this project with minimal costs, I needed to learn how to print designs on shirts. I thought of going through the heat transfer route but printing 20+ pieces of shirt this way isn't actually cost effective so I had to go old school style - silk screen printing.




These are the basic things I needed to start this project. As you can see in the pictures I had the following materials:

  1. Organza - the "silk" in silk screen
  2. Wooden Frame
  3. Textile Paints - TULCO red and black
  4. Packaging Tape
  5. Stapler and staple wires
  6. Glue
  7. Potassium Dichromate
  8. Sunlight
  9. Marlboro - the most important material during the creation process. This helped me out a lot during my "trial and error" phase
  10. Lighter - to light up the Marlboro cigs
The first thing I did was to put the organza on the wooden frame. I just made sure that it's stretched properly and used a stapler to secure it.

The most difficult process of the whole project was making the stencil. I went with the photo emulsion route which meant playing around with a chemical called potassium dichromate. Getting the right ratio of potassium dichromate and glue took me some time and a lot of mess to clean in the bathroom. Aside from the correct ratio, the sun should also be in the right position when I etch the design (this is starting to sound like a sacrificial ritual). All of this would have been a whole lot easier if I had a dark room and a light box but I didn't. Anyway to make the long story short, after several tries and millions of cigarettes, I finally got it right.

Applying the design on the shirt was a walk in the park with the help of the wife's stable hands.

The final product: