A great thing about screen printing is the ability to print with specialty inks such as glitter ink. You can’t get the quality of this fantastic special special effect with other printing processes such as offset, or flexography. Imagine back in your school days playing with glue and glitter creating a special effect treasure at school. Then you bring it home to mom and you got glitter everywhere. You are finding glitter in places you didn’t know you had for three weeks after your arts and crafts project. Well, this is nothing like that!
How Does the Glitter Stay Where It’s Supposed to Stay?
It’s all in the ink. UV screen printing ink is in a liquid form until UV light hits the ink, curing it nearly instantly. When using the correct mesh (large enough to allow glitter ink particles through) the glitter is trapped and suspended in the ink. That’s what creates the special effect. Specialty inks aren’t necessarily something you do as a “brand guideline” unless your brands have a call for glitter special effects, such as “Glitter Girl”, then you should use glitter ink every time you print!
What does Jurassic Park have to do with this?
Do you remember the amber stone in Jurassic Park that had the mosquito encapsulated within the fossilized tree resin? That’s what the glitter does within the UV clear ink. The ink must be somewhat transparent to allow light to enter and be reflected back from the particles suspended in it. This allows the special effect to happen.
What does it look like?
Well, a video doesn’t do it justice, but we’ve put together a short 45 second video to try and give you a visual of how the ink gives you that special effect using this specialty ink.
