A few weeks ago we did some potato stamping and ever since Josie's been into the idea of making prints ever since. She'll watercolor a picture, then try to make a print onto a clean sheet (not entirely effective), and we tried making a print of a crayoned picture using our iron (even less successful). This worked very well and really held Josie's (5) and Jasper's (2.5) attention for a long time (20 minutes). We used bubble wrap with small bubbles (it's what we had!) but I think larger bubbles would work well also, and a combination of the two would be fun to experiment with.
Materials:
Bubble wrap, textured paper (ours was corrugated), crumpled paper, or other thick papers or plastic goods that have a strong texture
Thick multicolored tempera or poster paint
Brushes
White paper to print on
Process:
Paint a design onto the bubble wrap or textured paper; don't get too much paint on or you'll lose the raised design and get a lot of paint down in the cracks--also interesting, but you lose some of the 'print' concept.
Place the paper on top of the painted surface and press down firmly with your hands or a brayer or rolling a wooden dowel. Peel paper off.
If you're using the crumpled paper it seems to work best to dip it into the paint then print it all over the paper to make a pattern. This is fun since you get a completely different variation on the concept of a 'print.' Once the crumpled paper is unfolded it's interesting to see where the painting surface was relative to the unpainted part.
Comments for this post
