How to Make Valentine's Day Relief Prints

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Lanie Evans and behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you how you can make a simple relief print for Valentine's Day. Check out some of the materials we're going to need today. Over here, you're going to need something to print on. I'm choosing to print on envelopes today so that when I make some interesting artwork I can mail it to a friend and it'll be decorated or I just give it to them. You can also use bags. You're going to need a burnishing tool for rubbing the ink. Over here, you're going to need a clean work station, something that's protecting your surface of a table, it will get messy. You're going to need some styrofoam or you can also use linoleum block prints as well for this. I'm going to use a piece of paper to draw out some ideas and sketches, especially when you're using words, you're going to want to do thsi step and I'll show you in a second. You're going to need some ink, a plate for your ink, a brayer, and a dull pencil. The dull pencil is important when you're using the styrofoam. Let's get started. So here, you're noticed that I've made out some sketches. I can use what I want, I can transfer it over. I wrote out the words here and it's important that you do that because when you go to print, it will be backwards. If you write them out "be mine" normally, when you go to make your print, it'll be backwards. This helps to avoid that. I'm going to start by drawing some of the ideas that I liked from my sketches. If you're not comfortable drawing directly onto the linoleum this really helps, or excuse me, styrofoam. And basically, this is why you want a dull pencil. You want to be able to transfer your image without cutting the styrofoam. So I just liked the patterns in this one, so I'm going to transfer this over. And I think I'm going to keep this one small for my envelope. Then here is where I'm going to trace my letters backwards. Okay, so this, the words are backwards. It's important that you get that done, otherwise, like I tell my students all the time, you know how to write it backwards. So you don't really see it very clearly so I'm going to go back in and make those ridges a bit more prominent and I can directly kind of go back over it with my dull rounded pencil. What you're doing is creating a ridge for the paint to, or so the paint won't go into so you'll have a perfect plate for printing. And the better the ridges and more defined they are the better print you'll have. And this step you do not want to use a sharp pencil, it's so important. Okay, so now I'm done. I've traced my image that I want to use onto the styrofoam. I'm ready to start rolling the ink out. You want to put about an inch worth of ink onto your pallet. And then you're going to take the brayer and roll it out. And you're going to roll it in different directions till you get this noise. And that's going to let you know that you have an even coat on your brayer and you're ready to go. You don't want to overdo the ink here. It'll cause a mess here on your plate. So take it and you're just going to press gently and roll it out. You see where the ink is being avoided, that's going to transfer, that's going to be the design that we're going to have on our envelope. We're going to get a nice, even coat of ink. Now I'm ready to take my envelope that I'd like to use today and I'm going to line it up in an interesting way. Let's use the back. Lay it down and then rub it. If I want to protect my plate I could always use a piece of paper to avoid getting that bit of ink everywhere else. You're going to turn it over, take your burnishing tool, you can use this spoon or a flat metal surface. I'm going to use the spoon for this one. So take it and rub it. You're going to do this for a little while to ensure all the ink that you'd like to use is going to be transferred over. You're adding, this process is done by friction. Now I'm ready to peel it off, and do it gently. And here's your finished product. This can be done with different envelopes, with cards and with paper and make art any kind of that. You can do this centered, you can do this off, you can even do more prints over here and really change it up."