The first Craft Café session will be taking place this Sunday 8th March at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
The activity is printing handmade cards and posters.
A couple of weeks ago I was able to try out some printing techniques at an
Art CPD day at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. It was primarily about
ways teachers can use the beautiful colours, textures and shapes of the natural
world to inspire their art lessons, and it gave me time to experiment with
different ways of printing. We tried out
a couple of different techniques including using left over bits and bobs such
as string, corrugated cardboard and bubble wrap to make a textured print
block. However the type of printing I thought would be best suited to craft
café is etching into foam.
This simple technique means that even if you’re not an
expert artist you can still produce a professional looking piece - I
actually found that it was often the simple designs which produced the
most striking finished products.
A leaf found in one of the Botanic Garden greenhouses inspired the design here. The etchings were made using a biro, and then smoothed out by going over them again with the rounded end of a pencil.
A colleague Corie made a beautiful Thank You card featuring
an owl. Of course the tricky bit about this is the mirror image 'Thank You' so when printed the text reads the right way - Corie has done a great job here!
We also discovered that teaming up with another person and sharing prints could create some lovely effects. Sharing is caring!
I had a great day and got loads of ideas for the printing session this weekend. On the day we will start with a tour of a few objects in the museum which are decorated with the bold, simple designs perfect for printing. We will then be printing posters and cards. It's the week before Mother's Day so it's the perfect opportunity to make a mum a unique card!
Tickets for the printing session, which runs from 2-4pm on Sunday March 8th, can be bought here.
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