How-Tuesday: Snowflake Gift Wrap with the NewNew Team

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We published this how-to last year but we're bring it back up for your holiday preparations!

Etsy How-Tuesday presents Kari aka ikyoto and Stella aka lookcloselypress of The {NewNew} York Team. Today we're going to learn how to screenprint our own snowflake gift wrap for the holidays. Kari and Stella remind us that recycling paper bags is a great source for materials for this kind of project.

The snowflake screenprint graphic was designed by the NewNew Street Team with each individual snowflake from a different member of the team. To download the unique snowflake graphic for this project, check out their team blog.

For more of their work, simply search "newnewteam".

Materials Needed:

• Silk Screen
• Squeegee
• Paper Bags / Junk Mail / Card Stock
• Scissors
• Ink Spreader / Spatula / Stirring Stick
• Iron
• Ironing Board
• A flat protected surface (table with construction paper works just fine)

Steps for Making Screenprinted Gift Wrap:

• Cut up your bags until they lay flat.
• Iron the bags with the iron on a cotton setting with some steam.
• Lay one bag on a flat protected surface (you can tape the edges down if you like).
  
  • Place the screen over the bag.
  • Have a friend hold the screen firmly in place.
  • Use an ink spreader, spatula, or stirring stick to put some ink evenly along one edge of the screen.
  • Using a squeegee firmly press down and pull the ink across the design holding the squeegee at a 45º angle.
  • Carefully lift the screen, while holding the paper down to separate the two.
  • Repeat swiftly until you notice the ink starting to gum in the screen at which point: rinse!

For more about burning your own screen to print with, check out this tutorial with Pete and Matt.

Watch more how-to videos and check out these how-to projects too!