Crafter's Gear

Many of you may be familiar with the Yudu Personal Screen Printer. The Yudu Cardshop offers screen printing on a much smaller scale and at a fraction of the cost.
Screen printing is super fun and easy and very versatile. There are several how-to videos for Yudu Cardshop on YouTube. Screen printing has been around as early as the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) however Provo Craft certainly gave it a modern day face lift allowing the average consumers easy access to screen print.

The Yudu CardShop Personal Card Screen-Printer comes with everything you need to get started (Printing base/machine, a pre-burned screen, adhesive mat, black ink, 3-color ink pad, dabber pencil and instructional guide). By default, almost all manufactures will recommend you only use products specifically designed for their brand but feel free to use other brands. My first attempt at using the Cardshop I knew right away I need to upgrade the ink and squeegee. The ink consistency was too thick. As soon as I ran my first print, I had to re-apply more ink to continue printing. When using Speedball ink the same amount of ink yields multiple prints. Be careful to not allow the ink to completed dry-up on your screen. By doing so, it will be difficult and/or nearly impossible to washout the ink from the screen which can result with an unprintable screen. You will also want to invest in a better squeegee; in order to evenly distribute ink throughout your image you must apply with great force with the plastic squeegee; a Speedball Squeegee does the job with much less force. If the squeegee and ink were made better, this printing machine is an ideal gadget for anyone looking to screen print on a small scale or for small print jobs and would have earned a 5 star review for me. But due to the cheaply constructed squeegee I have to give it 4.75 star.

Tip: Before applying paper cardstock to the adhesive mat, you will want to quickly run the palm of your hands over the adhesive mat a few times to absorb some of the tackiness. The adhesive on the mat is somewhat commercial grade. It is so strong that it will either rip and/or curl your regular cardstock when removing your finished print.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope you will also visit my Project Galleries to get inspired.