How to make your souvenir garment part 4!

Ok, I know there are waaayyyy better Mexican snacks than Tostidos but these were def our guilty pleasure during our 4 month trip <3. They are available on practically every street corner where you pick a bag of tortilla chips and add all kind of toppings. For some reason we didn’t take any pictures of tostilocos, probably because we were way to busy choosing toppings and munching away! So these pictures I found on the world wide web to give you an idea.

These bags of pure yumminess had to go on my souvenir sweater as they were such a joy during our trip ;). So after printing the sequoia on my sleeve I choose the tostilocos to cover the actual stain on my sweater.

I thought it would be fun to show you my process because there are some fun techniques in this print that can spice up your screen printing game. So let’s go! First up:

Cutting stencils for multiple layers.

I made a sketch in my notebook and then designed another one on see through paper to exactly fit the stain on my sweater, for perfect coverage. Then I cut one stencil per color. Since my main goals with this print was to cover a big stain, I started printing the tacos that had to be placed over the stain. The tacos and the lemons are both in gold (see how I decided on this color scheme using this extremely handy color book here).

With this first ‘taco’ stencil I did two tricks that I love.

Numero uno:
Adding texture to a print.
I cut some really small pieces of stencil paper and randomly placed them in the taco cut-outs to give some extra structure to the print. Same with the cut-outs in the lemon to make the structure of the parts. Easy to do and gives it so much more depth!

Numero dos:
Easy stencil placement.
Whenever a placement of a layer is super specific I like to first tape the stencil to my screen then take it off including the tape and place it sticky side up on the canvas I am printing on. This way I can hassle free place the stencil with the cut-outs, when I have everything in position I just place the screen on top and print away! (more about this amazing trick and many more in our book btw!)

Reparing a print.
After printing the second layer I realized I forgot to cut out one taco! Oh noooo! Can you see where? Just a little piece of taco peeking out the bag on the left.

Since it was just a small piece i just taped off the triangle and printed over it with the screen without a stencil. Easy does it!

Then I printed the Cilantro and Tomato layer and my Tostilocos are ready to go!

Up to the next print! I want to fill that sweater with aaaaaallll the memories, endless waves, beets (we went to a really cool beet festival, yes the vegetable), trumpets and horns and drums, cool Guatemalan busses, fire works, margaritas, the quetzal, guitar case, mexican flags, masks, awesome tents we slept in, popotes, Mexican dresses, vaping volcanos, the works! Which one should I print next????

Xoxoxox

Barbara aka Bobbinhood

We are Barbara and Dani aka Bobbinhood making our clothes last one print at the time (f*ck fast fashion, we are on a mission to make the fastest fashion, slooooow fashion, woehahahaha). We love sharing our screen prints adventures, surfing, traveling and making things and looooove to inspire so if you have any questions let us knoooow!