Sometimes standard inks aren’t enough to showcase your amazing t-shirt designs. That’s when you need to turn to specialty inks. There are a number of fun specialty inks that we can use in screen printing. Here is a list of them:
Puff ink
This ink will puff up like a marshmallow when in the drying oven. It adds an interesting feel and three dimensional look to a print. It only works on large areas, so don’t expect it to work on fine lines, but it makes for an interesting edge.
Metallic Inks
Metallic inks are different from foil printing. With these are actually printing a metallic flake. We can print a large flake or a small flake depending on your preference or ink availability. They do tend to lose their shine with washing, so if you want enduring shine, go with foil.
Foil
It comes in 12 different colours and is heat pressed onto the shirt. We print a glue, dry it and then lay a sheet of shiny foil on the glue. The heat press affixes the foil to the glue and we rip off the rest leaving foil only where the glue was printed. It is super shiny and should stand up well to washes. This method tends to be more expensive than metallic prints only because it is a two step process.
Glow-In-The-Dark Ink
Yes we can and we have it. It prints as a yellowish – green, but under black light, or in the dark, it glows super bright. It does lose its glow slowly with repeated washes.
If you think any of these specialty inks might be right for your t-shirt design, let us know. We can make some suggestions and help make your design come out just right!