Pro Tips Please! Complex design creating for a silk screening on a bottle

[thescientist24]

I created a VERY complex design for a logo that we want silk screened onto a bottle. I need to get the art off to the silk screeners all ready to go. When I "object-path-join path" to combine all the paint brush strokes into one - Illustrator ends up putting weird streaks and lines through the art. So maybe this is not the way. What is the best way to "flatten" the art into one shape and reduce file size? The logo will have words that I can outline..... but how do I "outline" this artwork for best results? THANK YOU! part of the image I need to flatten

[pedley_s]

How many colors is the silkscreening job? If it is just one, then you probably don't need to "flatten" the artwork as much as you need to invert it. In silkscreening,  the typical process involves making a film positive, so everything that is black will print as ink color, and all white areas will be the material showing through.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

If you absolutely need to flatten that artwork: first outline the strokes by using Object > Expand appearance.