Monoprints

  I  have LOADS of books and old craft magazines and they have lots and lots of projects in them.  I tend to read them and think "someday I will try that out".  Well- what am I waiting for??  While I was doing the never ending cleaning of the craft room this week I found some re-inkers for the colorsnap ink pads and I decided to try out mono-printing.  Mono printing is a form of printmaking that produces one unique image.  Even if I do a second attempt at the print- it is not exactly the same as the first print.  The type of monoprinting I tried out involves putting the ink on a surface- etching into the ink and then transferring the ink to the paper to make the print.  These are the re-inkers that I used for this project.  If I try this again I might see how using acrylic paint from tubes works-maybe if I use a thicker medium I would get a stronger print?

So you start off with a piece of glass or plexiglass.  I put a few pea sized drops of ink down right onto the surface of the glass.

Then you take a sponge (I used make up sponges from the dollar store) and spread the ink out a bit- using a separate sponge for each color.

Here is the fun part.  I used a rubber stamp and stamped right into the ink.  I cleaned off the stamp and stamped into the ink a second time with the clean stamp.  Then I took a wooden stick and drew some squiggles right into the ink.  The article stopped here- but I thought...I wonder what would happen if I put some paper shapes down in a couple of places too?  (those are the pink flowers)

Now you carefully lay your piece of paper onto the ink and take a brayer and roll over the back of the page- being careful to keep the page in place and not letting it slide around.  I did this 3 times because I was curious how many times the ink would last.  The yellow page is my first print- the lavander is the second print and the green is the third. 

I thought this was pretty fun and could be used in so many different ways. I wanted to make something right away with one of the prints so I took the strongest print on the yellow paper and I cut it out and layered over some other papers to make a quick card. I think I'll go write a note to a sweet friend in it and pop it in the mail :)