Its always good to get back to doing a bit of something you enjoy while you are hibernating for the winter and so I thought I would start back with printing. It's something I do quite a lot at work and I love, but I want to get back to doing more for myself and at home. It really is a simple thing to do on a kitchen table on a rainy afternoon and with the rise of the geometric print all over Etsy and Not on the High Street, I thought it would be the perfect introduction to printing for those who have never done it before.
First up is the materials, you will need: Acrylic Paint in colours of your choice, paint tray - I use an old plate, funky foam, glue, pencil, scissors, paper, cardboard and a paint brush or sponge.
You will need to think about your design so that you can make your stamps first. I kept this one very simple and decided to make triangles. Draw your design and cut the funky foam out before glue-ing the foam onto a piece of cardboard. You need something to hold onto when stamping so the cardboard works well, but it could be wood, bottle caps or corks, whatever works for you. I decided to make 3 stamps for each of my colours, but you could reuse the stamps and just give them a clean off with some water in between. Just make sure not to make them too damp or the water will make the paint too thin.
Once the stamps are made, I thought about how I wanted my print to layout and did a little sketch. You might want to do this sketch first and so you know which stamps to make but I knew I wanted to use triangles for this design and so it was just a case of how it was to be laid out.
Then get your paints out, my turquoise coloured paint was a bit too blue originally and so I added some more yellow to make it more green and mixed it up. You can use a paintbrush or sponge to add the paint onto your stamp, just make sure it has a thin layer of paint and not too thick. I would suggest keeping a spare piece of paper next to you to try out first, so that you don't ruin your finished piece.
Once you have your paint on your stamp, turn it over and press down on the paper, make sure not to twist it or it will smudge. If there is too much paint on the stamp it will feel like it is moving when you push down and so this is a good indication of too much paint.
Press down on all the areas of the stamp and pull off directly upwards, this is where the cardboard becomes useful to pull up quickly and cleanly.
I printed each of my colours separately, but you could do a row at a time if you would prefer.
The last colour, was my copper paint which had a different consistency and so you can see from the bottom right of the picture that it leaked from the side of the stamp on the first one - too much paint! But I quite liked it and so decided to stick with it for this print.
That's it, you are finished. Just to leave it for a good few hours for the paint to dry completely. Then you can put it in a frame, stick it up with washi tape - a firm favourite of ours or give it to someone else as a present.
You can make this as complicated or simple as you like, some triangles interlocking down the middle of the paper, or circles in all kinds of colours would work nicely too. Just make sure that if you are printing on top of another colour the top colour is darker than the bottom colour or it will show through.
So, what do you think? Hope you like it, goes very well with my gallery wall and so I think I will keep this one. I thought about doing a series of posts about printing and so showing you how easy it is and the effects you can get, what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
It's so great to see how easy it is to make your own artwork. There really is so much of this about at the moment and so making your own unique piece is definitely that extra bit special.
H, xxx
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