We love to go old school using silk screen printing. Want to DIY it? Here's a quick run down of which ink you'll need to make your design work.

1. What Silk Screen Printing Ink Should You Pick for Your
Design?
jollyprints.com/blog/silk-screen-printing/
Mike
If ever there were an artistic technique to be associated with modern pop culture, silk screen printing would
arguably be it. Used on everything from posters and product embellishment and even circuit boards, the
technique has been instrumental in producing millions of prints that—especially in the future—will be
considered cultural artifacts of our time. And that’s even without taking into account the silk-screened
works of artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
The beauty of this particular artistic technique is that it’s so very accessible. With just a bit of capital outlay
and a little design sense, just about anyone can put out his own little piece of pop culture using methods
little changed since their inception a couple of millennia ago.
Nowadays, though, the choice of substrate for silk screen printers has been expanded significantly. What’s
a substrate? It’s basically the canvas for the design: the material on which a print design is deposited.
While screen printing was largely used on paper and similar materials during its boom, today’s screen

2. printers are now famous for working with textiles too—specifically, with clothing for the purpose of
embellishment. In fact, fabric screen printing is one of the biggest industries at the moment. It’s an art
technique so made for pop usage that it’s gone to the wearable and even the DIY level.
Expanding Options
We mentioned DIY above. While you might be thinking it means Do It Yourself (and you’d be right), it can
actually take on another meaning too in this context: Design It Yourself. One of the fastest-growing
sections of the textile screen-printing industry is the custom clothing section. For example, customized
shirts can now be ordered and even designed by those who don’t have the time to realize their ideal t-shirt
themselves.

3. Companies offering this type of service often let clients pick whatever part of the process they feel
comfortable with handling. A client can design a shirt completely by himself, for instance, or just make
selections that define parts of the design. For instance, it’s possible for the client to choose the exact inks
he wants used in printing his design. Given the sheer range of ink options now, though, that isn’t always
the easiest decision.
In fact, whether you’re setting up your own silk screen printing rig at home or asking a professional t-shirt
printer to do a job for you, you’ll likely be assailed by dozens and dozens of ink options. As such, one of
the first things you’ll need to learn to get into DIY screen printing would be the types of ink available.
Types of Ink Used in Fabric Silk Screen Printing
Broadly speaking, there are 2 main types of screen printing inks in this area:
Plastisol inks
Thick, particle-heavy, and often strongly-saturated in color, plastisol inks sit on top of the fabric and cling to
it from there. They typically feel thicker than water-based inks and get their name from being plastic-
based.

4. Water-based inks
Smoother and more liquid than plastisol inks, these inks dye the actual fabric as opposed to sitting on top
of it. The result is more softness than with plastisols in the printed item, which printers refer to as a soft
hand feel.
Plastisol and water-based inks differ in other ways. For example, they have different curing requirements.
Curing is a heat-based process that makes sure that the ink is fully dry and properly settled into/onto the
fabric. Without proper curing, any of the following can happen:
1. The print can come off quickly after washing the garment.
2. The print can lose the originally intended vibrancy quickly.
3. The print can crack and flake off.
While some inks claim to be air-dry ones—many water-based inks say this on their labels—most of them
actually still require curing. They can feel dry to the touch, for instance, but may only really be dry on the
outer layer.
Proper curing is crucial for quality screen printing. Individual inks vary, but on the whole, you can expect
water-based inks to take a little more time or effort to cure. That’s because the water in them needs to be
completely evaporated before they can be pronounced properly cured. T-shirt printers use special
machines for reaching the desired curing temperatures of their inks.

5. Plastisol and water-based are only the primary categories. Ink development and manufacture are big
industries in themselves, and throughout the years, more than a few special ink types have been created
for screen printers to use. Here we go into some of the special types, which typically fall under one of the
above categories:
Note for succeeding items to the content uploader: it would be good to have photos of all of the ink types
listed below. The photos should be inserted before the name of each type.
Cracking ink
While unintended cracking in a print can be a definite problem for any printer, there are in fact inks
formulated to get the cracked, distressed look instantly onto a design. International Coatings Company
makes Destructo White, for instance, which printers can use to get a vintage, weathered look on their work
immediately after curing.
Puff/expanding ink
This ink was developed from plastisol inks. A heat-reactive foaming chemical in the ink helps it puff out as
the garment is cured.
Suede ink
Derived from puff inks, this ink boasts a fuzzy nap after curing that gives it its name. The nap comes from
a foaming agent in the ink that is very similar to the one used in puff inks: it just doesn’t puff as much and
results in the fuzzy, almost aerated-surface texture of the dried print.
Clear gel or glossy ink
Inks applied as glossing layers over other ink layers for a special shine. These are great examples of inks
intended for stacked usage, i.e. multi-layer screen printing.
Reactive inks

6. These can be moisture-reactive or even photo-reactive. Common photo-reactive inks show an otherwise-
hidden design and color when exposed to UV light. New inks have also been developed that reveal an
otherwise-hidden design when the garment is moistened, typically after sweating (thus their use in
activewear).
Glow in the dark inks
These do just as the name says. While older versions of the ink were restricted to just a few colors, new
versions offer more colors, from blue to purple to red.
Shimmer/glitter inks
These get their shimmer from small shiny particles in the liquid ink, which is technically a clear gel. The
flakes settle as the print dries and the result is a glittering print design. Shimmer inks can also be inks that
leave a print that has only a faint shimmer, as opposed to the full-blown shine of metallic inks.
Reflective ink
Often used for safety and industrial purposes, these are used to generate uniforms and shirts used by
people who do their work at nighttime or low-light conditions.
Metallic ink
This is very similar to shimmer/glitter inks. The big difference is that instead of having a particulate
shimmer, the ink dries as a smooth, almost foil-like shine. This is because it uses much finer particles,
giving a smoother metallic look.
Discharge ink
This is a solution for printing light inks on dark substrates and is a water-based ink. Usually, printers would
have to use plastisols for light-on-dark printing. That’s because they sit on the surface of the fabric and
don’t get “darkened” by the fabric’s color. Light water-based inks, on the other hand, don’t retain their
lightness as they cure when used on dark fabrics. They sink into the fabric itself, after all. As a result, a
water-based white ink will turn out grey when used on a black shirt.
But discharge inks make it possible to achieve the soft hand feel of water-based inks when printing light-
on-dark. They do this by containing a chemical that removes the dye from the fabric being printed before
depositing the final ink of the printed design. Basically, the ink “erases” the pre-existing color on the
garment first so that the lighter color being printed will show better.
Bonus: Foil
Not really an ink, but it is pretty often used in screen printing. A foil sheet is heat-pressed over an existing
plastisol ink layer or a screen-printed glue layer in order to leave an effect similar to a metallic ink print.
What to consider when choosing inks:
Now, you can’t just pick inks based on their looks either. There are other things to keep in mind when
picking the ink to be used for your garment. Below are just a few more considerations to keep in mind
before you make your decision.
1. How hard-wearing is the ink? Some inks stand repetitive washing better than others, so you need to
think about how often you plan to wear and wash something. If the garment being printed is supposed to
be a regularly-used outfit or a uniform, you should probably stay away from the less durable inks.

7. 2. What substrate are you using? Different fabrics actually have dedicated ink lines. There are inks for
pure cotton fabrics, ones for poly blends, and more. Also, as mentioned above, some inks don’t show well
on certain fabrics: while water-based inks do have discharge inks now for light-on-dark printing, discharge
inks don’t work on all fabric types.
3. FOR THE DO-IT-YOURSELF CROWD: Do you know what emulsion should be used when screen-
printing using that ink? Just as there are different types of ink, there are different types of emulsion, et
which one you use depends on the ink you’ve selected. This is because some ink types can break down
some emulsions, e.g. some emulsions will collapse when exposed to a water-based ink. This will destroy
your stencil and wreck the print you leave on clothing.