Printmaking Workshop: foam paper stamps

During my printmaking workshop for Arts Outreach this last week, I wanted to teach a variety of projects and expose the kiddos to as many styles of printmaking as possible, albeit a smaller scale version but enough to give them a taste for it!


The agenda for the week was: 
Monday: veggie stamps and potato carving
Tuesday: screenprinting
Wednesday: foam paper stamps
Thursday: carving wood and preparing puffy paint reliefs
Friday: printing the wood cuts and puffy paints!


I especially wanted to familiarize the kiddos with using brayers and ink slabs. Not having actual slabs and not wanting to create a ridiculous mess with 22+ kiddos, I had to improvise. Enter tin foil slab!

I ran a piece of tinfoil down the length of the already paper covered table. Then taped down all the sides of it and added dividing strips about every foot along it. This made little square slabs for each ink color and still left space on the table for the kiddos to make their prints! Then I rolled out a bit of each color with the brayers and the masterpiece was ready for destruction!!

And the best part, clean up was the easiest thing! Pull up the tape of the first paper under the foil and roll it all up into a ball and voila! CLEAN TABLE = very happy and messy art teacher!

The foam paper stamps also went over really well too! I saw a tutorial for these on Pinterest a while back. Since they were a. dirt cheap, b. super fun looking and I c. had all the materials already, we had to do them!

To make them, you will need:

-cd cases

-foam paper, either sheets or already cut out shapes

-double sided tape

-scissors

-paper bags

-ink or stamp pads

-if using ink, rollers, tin foil and masking tape for the “ink slabs”

First, I took apart the cd cases so I had only the front and back pieces, not the paper bits or the inner part with the circle that holds the cd in place.

Next, I had the kiddos cut out their own shapes of stamps! They also used a bunch of pre cut ones too, including letters.

Tape the pieces onto the FLAT SIDE of the cd case. A lot of the kiddos were confused with printing their names and having to tape them backwards. After a couple tries they got it, and it was helpful that the cd cases were clear so they could see from the back if they were taping them in the right order and direction!

Then using either rolled out ink or stamp pads, ink up your stamps. Be careful that they're not inked up too much, or the stamps may slip about or little details will fill in. 

Then stamp! Push down directly on top of each piece and make sure it gets a good even push. I used the large panels from paper bags as our canvases for the day, which was good for the little ones who were very liberal with their ink!

There you have it! A cheap and easy way to introduce kiddos to printmaking! I’ll be posting about the puffy paint prints soon…super stoked about these!