DIY Printing Press

Happy Monday darlings. Back from a wonderful few days of travel, more to share on that tomorrow.

My friend G is creative, social, and a lovely host, so naturally she gets a group of girls together for "crafternoons", typically a relaxing weekend afternoon with snacks, crafts and chats. Let me tell you, this group of girls has some unique talents- some wrote, some did needlepoint, some painted, and the lady of the house used her new printing press.

Now, I've never used a printing press, so I don't know too much about it, but she gave me a basic run-down and it's something I would look to try in the future. She starts with a rubber block, and using some sharp carving tools she scrapes out the details of a design. You are working in negatives, which I can imagine makes it tricky- the areas you scrape away will be white space, and the areas you leave will be covered with ink. The design will also be reversed.

G rolled out some black ink on a piece of tin foil, and pressed the rubber block firmly. Once it was well covered, she put a piece of paper under the press, set the block on top, and lowered the press.

She used an ad from a fashion magazine (LOVE the uber-stuffed fall editions, no?!) as her guide. She said as far as stamps go, this was a relatively simple design- apparently you can do multiple layers and multiple colors. When D and I went to dinner a week or two later, she had sketched out an intricate design for the Capitol Building here in DC, and it looked amazing. I'll convince her to send over a picture when she's done with that one, but for now, such a cool art form!