I’m lov­ing this new addi­tion to our Christ­mas decor this sea­son. A Christ­mas tree word screen print!!

I can’t image how long that would have taken me to hand-paint. But, it actu­ally didn’t take long at all because it’s a screen print made with the new Cus­tom Sim­ply Screen Kit by Plaid Crafts (sold exclu­sively at Hobby Lobby)!

The kit (which retails for $39.99) itself comes with 3 size screens (plus a test screen), paint pens, rinse basin, sponge, squeegee, the light and box — basi­cally, every­thing you need to get started.  In addi­tion, I also received a screen refill pack and some fab­ric ink. The box (which actu­ally dou­bles as the light box used) has sim­ple instruc­tions on the side and there are more detailed direc­tions inside. Even still, I was ner­vous. Hon­estly, even though this thing is called, “Sim­ply Screen”, I was really intimidated.

But, thanks to a few addi­tional tips from Plaid & fel­low crafty blog­gers, it came out great! The first step was choos­ing a design. Inspired from a large piece of Christ­mas decor, I decided to do the word Christ­mas tree. I made my design on the com­puter, printed it (on stan­dard copy paper even though the direc­tions call for 10lb weight), and then went over the design in sharpie. *Note: it does NOT say that you have to do this in the direc­tions. How­ever, numer­ous other crafters seemed to have bet­ter luck when the image was darker. Plus, I wanted my let­ters to be a lit­tle thicker.

Then, I fol­lowed the direc­tions, plus a few addi­tional tips to make the screen. I stuck my image to one of the screens as the direc­tions show and placed it in the light box. How­ever, in addi­tion, I laid a piece of glass (just a plate out of a pic­ture frame) to cover my print & the screen. This was a tip sent by the folks at Plaid to help the image from lift­ing off the screen and get a “cleaner” image. It went in the light box, in a dark room, for exactly 25 min­utes.After the 25 min­utes were up, the screen has to soak for about 30 sec­onds in luke warm water. Then, using the sponge, I gen­tly rubbed off the blue emul­sion. There is a basin included to do this in, but I just did it in my kitchen sink. It worked great!After dry­ing the screen on paper tow­els for just a few min­utes, I was ready to try it out! First up, just a piece of card­stock to make a Christ­mas card. I used gold dust as the color. Paint­ing was SO easy. Just taped the screen down to make sure it didn’t move, put a line of paint at the top & use the squeegee to pull the paint over the image. Here’s what that first image looked like:I loved it! So, I decided we needed a print by the nativ­ity scene. But, I didn’t have a gold frame. So, I made another print–this one in sil­ver! It’s a great addi­tion to our Christ­mas nativ­ity shelf (since we have no man­tel). Now I just can’t decide where to put it next! I was think­ing about doing shirts for the boys. Do you think it’s too “girly” in any­way? Or, can the boys wear it? I’m also think­ing about doing a pil­low or some other tex­tiles. Thoughts?

Review:

• It worked great for me. But, I can see where there def­i­nitely might be some issues & a learn­ing curve. Unlike the aver­age con­sumer, I had the added ben­e­fit of get­ting tips straight from Plaid and other crafters before start­ing. The tip of using the glass seems like some­thing that really helped & Plaid should con­sider adding that to the directions.
• I like that you only have to buy the kit once. Then, if you want to do more, you only need to buy dif­fer­ent color paints or the addi­tional refill packs.
• It has GREAT poten­tial for projects! You don’t have to use trans­paren­cies or make the image back­wards. Plus, of course, the beauty of screen print­ing is that you can cre­ate en mass!
• It’s totally customizable–you can make WHATEVER you want!  Even your own hand drawn designs if you’d like! The down­side though, is that you are lim­ited by the size of the box (which isn’t even a full sized sheet of copy paper).

If you’d like to see a video of the process, you can walk through it with the lovely Kim from Today’s Cre­ative Blog!

Dis­clo­sure: I was pro­vided the Screen Print­ing kit & sup­plies from Plaid, but my opin­ions and expe­ri­ences are entirely my own.