Knowing that we’d be snowed in all weekend (and that I’d need to do something other than play Scrabulous on the laptop), I decided to make some DIY holiday cards using block printing techniques.

I started with linoleum, which I’d worked with in an art class decades ago. Just as I remembered, the linoleum was hard to work with; I ended up spending more time stanching blood than making any real progress. I bandaged my hands and headed back to the art supply store, where I was directed toward something called Speedy Cut. I’d read online that Speedy Cut was prone to crumbling, but I did not find this to be the case at all.

I had a design concept in mind, which I created by compositing three photos of Emma, Baci and me, tracing them with the Bezier tool in Illustrator, then adding some simple pine trees on the sides.

Using the side of a soft pencil, I covered the opposite side of the design sheet in graphite. By flipping the paper onto the Speedy Cut (graphite down, design up) and tracing the outline on the front, the design was transferred. I then cut out the negative space so that the positive areas stood in relief. I did this with both the X-acto knife and slotted linoleum cutting tool.

It was then a matter of inking up the ink plate, rolling ink onto the design template, placing a card face down on the inked template, and giving it a good going-over. I found that the back of a wooden spoon worked better than the side of my hand.
I also found (only at the very end, of course) that adding additional colors sloppily yields excellent results.

It had been a long time since I’d done anything arts-and-craftsy. My sketchbooks and charcoals are in the depths of our basement (near the box of obsolete AC adapters and wires that I keep for some occasion that has never arisen). In any case, I’d forgotten how all-consuming a process like this can be, in the best of ways. It felt great to spend a few hours away from the laptop, doing something analog for a change.

My foray back into the analog world wasn’t all pleasurable, however. The cards now needed to be written and addressed, wherein I learned that I now get writer’s cramp when hand-writing anything longer than eight words.

tags: art, block printing, diy, holidays | link to this entry |