**I received the DIY Print Shop Table Top Screen Printing Kit as compensation for this post. All opinions in this post are completely my own and were not suggested by the sponsor.
Last week I attended a blogger event at Ryonet to learn about their company and the new DIY Print Shop Table Top Sceen Printing Kit they created in collaboration with Print Liberation. I rarely attend events like this, but as I dabble in screen printing and already buy products from Ryonet, I thought it would be informative and helpful for me. Also, they promised doughnuts.
It was a super fun morning learning about printing, products, and getting our hands dirty a bit. I didn't expect them to take us through the whole process of printing, but Ryan and Josh showed us everything from start to finish. I took a class at The Make House here in Portland about a year ago so this was a great refresher and I learned a bunch of tricks to make my printing life easier.
At the end of the event, I was lucky enough to take a DIY Table Top Screen Printing Kit home with me. I am crazy excited about all that it contains. This kit seriously has everything you need to get started with printing. It even has hinges so you can set up your own DIY printing press which is something I did not have. It has a bulb that will burn your screen in about 12 minutes. The bulbs I purchased at Home Depot when I first started take 45 minutes.
I am convinced this is the most complete beginner screen printing kit on the market. It certainly costs more than the Speedball Kit I started out with, but you also don't need to go out and buy extra stuff. The products you receive are barely comparable between those two kits. The squeegee with the Speedball kit is laughable compared to what you get with the DIY Table Top Kit. The Speedball Kit doesn't come with an emulsion scoop coater, transparencies, an exposure bulb, light safe bulb, or degreaser that are all pretty much necessary for printing. These all come standard in the DIY Table Top Kit. Once you finally gather all of your supplies after buying a different kit, you will wish you went with the DIY Table Top Kit, I promise. They even considered the details. It comes with rubber gloves and adhesive to tack down the material you print on.
This is everything included in the kit:
You can get a comprehensive list of what all of these supplies are here.
I love all of the detail that went into designing the kit as well. Look at how fun these bottles are:
I'm excited to get started with this kit and build a hinge press with it which will make things a lot easier when printing by myself. You can also buy the kit in combination with Ryonet's Starter Hobby Press which is absolutely on my Christmas list this year after getting a change to play around with their presses. I can't believe how affordable it is.
I've had a number of people ask me what they need to get started in printing and it's nice to finally have one link to send them to instead of a comprehensive list of supplies they have to gather on their own. It makes printing feel so much more accessible to beginners.
-Kira
