Vlogging My First Screenprinting Project | Custom Squad Hoodies

In college, I somehow became very #blessed with a great, large group friends that were really the reason I made it through a challenging 4 years. One of the coolest things that came out of that group was becoming roommates with 3 of them during our final year at school. Although I hate living with other people and hope to never do so again, it was the perfect time to all live together and get to graduation together.

an iconic grad squad

Every year since living together, these old roommates and I have done a gift exchange around Christmas to celebrate our friendship, test our knowledge of each other, and maintain a little piece of that roommate connection we’ve maintained. It’s been a few years of this now, and this year I made a suggestion to switch things up for the exchange.

These last few months of 2019, I’ve been getting back into the physical arts. As a graphic designer, I create so much every day in the digital world, and it was getting a little uninspiring. Working with computers is a lot of the same, and the reason I even chose design as a career path was because of my love of painting and drawing throughout my life.

So, to give myself even more motivation to keep exploring with making physical items, I asked my BFFs if they wanted to have a DIY/homemade/crafted theme for our annual gift exchange. I only expected one of them to be down, but to my surprise they all agreed right away without a fight. Regardless of what they agreed to, I might’ve still made something like this for them, but I think everyone appreciates some reason to force themselves to make something.

When I first suggested the DIY theme, I wasn’t totally sure yet what I was going to make. I got into screenprinting kind of slowly; I went to a workshop back in August (hosted by an awesome studio in Austin, TX called Raw Paw), where I learned how a studio prints custom shirts. It was a big overview of an art I had very little familiarity with, so it mostly all went over my head. Throughout the months since then I started doing more research into what I actually saw at that workshop and slowly gathered the many materials I required for making my own silk screen and printing with it.

I made my first screen with emulsion over the Thanksgiving break (those were my only Thanksgiving plans and it was great). The emulsion had some hiccups with some parts of the design (which can maybe be played off as vintage, I’m not sure if I want to redo it yet), but overall it was successful.

my first screenprint attempt

After what I learned from that first screen and its relative success, I decided I would try to take on a screenprint project for the gift exchange. I made sure to start early in case I really messed up along the way and needed time to make easier back-up gifts (this is probably the least procrastinated project I’ve ever done).

I made a silly design based on a photo of us I had from a story in five to nine magazine vol. 1 and our shared love of “chisme”. I also wanted to honor our original bond as roommates with a sleeve design that referenced that. Creating these designs was the easiest part of the process. I mainly used Photoshop and Procreate (for iPad), which is very familiar territory for me.

This vlog documents the rest of the long journey!