Soy wax for screen printing

I like printing and recently had a great success with paper templates, which I reported on this blog.

So, here's a good, simple idea.

I  used my normal screen (my screen comes from a Speedball kit but others in the class made their own screens using cheap picture frames from Ikea and net curtain netting - with great success).

Then I took a simple design I had sketched onto paper, taped this to the inside of the screen and painted melted soy wax onto the areas that I wanted to block from the ink.

You can just make out the image in the photograph below - the faint impression of the leaves is where I did not paint the hot wax (the pink and purple stripes on the net are staining from a previous experiment).

The wax sets quickly, and then I used it to create several prints, with much success.  Little cracks in the wax do let paint through (you can make out little green flecks in the image below) but that was OK.

You can gently wash the screen with cold water to remove the ink and re-use it, and then when you have finished you can wash it in hot water to remove the wax.

In threory you can get more pulls from this technique than with paper.  However, I think, no matter how gentle I am, washing will damage the wax a bit, but I will give it another go.

Anyhow, another technique to try.