newspaper?

I'm not really sure if I feel comfortable trying to use the ancient photo emulsion stuff I found with my screen... it's all so old, and some of it might have hardened? I guess I really haven't opened one of the containers yet, but I'm a little terrified.

Because of this, and because I didn't really know what I was doing, I just used the drawing and filler fluids to make my screens. I would trace my image onto the screen with a pen, then fill that area with the drawing fluid. After it dried, I would coat the screen in the filler fluid. Once that's dry, the drawing fluid would wash out, clearing that area of the screen. So, this method is similar in a way to photo emulsion, but was less accurate. I had trouble washing out small areas of the drawing fluid and edges were nowhere near crisp. I always ended up having to go back in and touch up holes in the screen filler as well.

So, I've been dragging my feet a little bit on trying to do photo emulsion at home by myself. The most logical thing for me to do would probably just be to go buy some new stuff and some lights and get it done that way, but frankly, I'm kind of lazy, and I don't really want to spend much setting up equipment when I know I'll just have to be moving it soon anyway. So, I got super excited when I saw this article on FPO: For Print Only:

[image from FPO]

Justin Leibow was trying to teach his kids about screen printing and just used newspaper to block the ink from a blank screen. Now, that seems to me to be the ultimate cheap way to make some short-run simple prints. Definitely worth a shot!