I’ve decided that I wanted to participate in a printmaking exchange. I haven’t participated in anything in a while, so I decided to start my own. Open to everyone!

If you’re interested, check out the page I made with all of the info you need.

In all excitement, my addiction to Wedding planning and design is getting a taste of something for real. No. I’m not getting married, but my friend from highschool is, and she and her fiance have decided to let me design and make their wedding invitations myself!!

To help with this project, I just ordered a couple samples of cardstock from handmade-paper.us and I just bought myself a die-cutting & embossing machine! I’ll get to try it out and create some wonderful personalized designs. I’m really excited about it even though I don’t always work with paper crafts, but maybe this will be the start of a new passion!

I’m considering participating in the Littlest Print Exchange. I missed out on a print exchange last year that I really honestly could have participated in if I hadn’t been a stickler for exact dates and timing.

The idea is that 50 artists get together and make fifty 3.5in x 3.5in prints. Send them in and exchange them. Sounds cool. Nice small prints. I’d have to come up with an idea. And… How exactly would I make this edition of 50? Should I do a sheet of 5 and run it 10 times? Sheet of 10 and run it 5 times? Or should I do each one individually?? That’s a lot of work. I think before I even consider participating, I should see if I come up with a design, and decide on how to execute it. THEN I might sign up to participate if there are still openings. The dates are all pending. It’s open call until they get 50 participants.

Another one?? Okay so I just found another print exchange. PrintZero Studio Exchange #6. Last year they had a whopping 285 participants! For this one there need to be 15 5x7in prints. 2 for exhibition and 13 up for random exchange. The deadline for this one is May 15th. So as long as my prints get there by that date, they’re in. There’s no registration! Yay! But can/will I do it?? I’d be really fun to.

So I’ve been experimenting. It’s taken me months to actually pull a print off of my plates! This is a method I read about that was developed by Pamela Conway Caruso. The short of it is, etching a plate with what you want to print, and then going over the scrapes with watercolor pencil. You then print it onto dampened paper, and it lifts the color onto it.

I’m still working on it, trying to get the right balance of paper moisture, etching depth, and print pressure (without a press… I ended up trying a rolling pin).

But these are my first two plates. They got a bit washed out from scanning. I didn’t take the time to adjust the scanners settings. I think I need to clean up my etchings just a little bit more. Some color got wiped away before printing on the jellyfish. The hearts were on a styrene plate, and the jellyfish is on a bit of plastic used to guard the viewing window on a welders mask. My dad brought home around 24 of those plates for me to mess around with. I also intend to get an etching … gun? because my hands cramp up from etching…

This is the new method I hope to reprint most of my works in for a smaller, quicker format. I’m pretty excited to work on it some more.

When I signed up for the Printmaking Exchange Six. There was no specific method of printmaking required, which means I could use my half-ass but works ways… Since I don’t do woodblock which seems to be extremely popular (I really wanna try woodblock, but it’s just too expensive to start with the tools and such.) I do bastardized lithography and lino cut, which are both nice and cheap and effective. The theme was also open. AND I signed up when I had sixty+ days to do it

I didn’t, until just within the past two weeks, finally come up with a design, and now I’m starting to feel the pressure. I designed it, and well, due to the… detail… I may not be able to do it in linocut, which is what I wanted to do. Because it’s faster and less messy than lithography. But I don’t think I’ll be able to work all the detail in a simple linocut without it being like… a complete mess… So now I’m thinking I should go back to lithography. Because I really like it, and you get a lot of detail, but the cons are that it will take FOREVER if I have to do 12 prints.

So just NOW I thought maybe I’ll stick with linocut and just not worry about the details and make it look more spontaneous. It might be faster… but then again, I’d have to cut out like… 6 blocks!!

I’d need 6 plates (15 copies) of each for lithography for incase of mistakes and extra prints. Which happens fast with a copy machine, HOWEVER, I’d need to cut and prep EACH piece of paper (that’s 90 pieces) for printing. Then make 12 prints one piece of paper at a time.

For lino, I’d just need to crack out 6 plates carved, and then just start printing. I guess I’ll go for lino. I did wanna work on lino some more.