Printing Techniques

Foam printing is probably the easiest form of printing. First of all you need to do is design an image or symbol and then cut it out on a piece of foam. Once cut out you need to stick the foam onto a piece of cardboard, which will make it sturdy. Then add some paint to the foam and start printing on some plain paper. I really liked doing this form of printing as it was very creative and anyone is able to do it. Foam printing is a lot easier than other forms of printing, such a lino printing because lino printing is quite tricky and time consuming as you have to carve out your design and then use a big press to print it. Below are pictures of my foam printing designs.

Screen printing is the quickest form out printing out of the four. First of all you need to get a cup full of binder and a small amount of coloured ink and mix together. Then you need to create an image using stencils on the screen. Then you pour the ink onto a screen and use the squeegee to spread the ink across the screen. Finally you peel the screen back to reveal the image you have created. I liked screen printing because it was also very easy but the outcome was much better than foam printing because the image came out neater and looked more professional. Also screen printing is very quick compared to foam printing as you can create a full image in one full swoop, instead of having to stamp every individual image. Below are a few images of my screen printing experience.

Lino printing was the trickiest form of printing because you had to carve out your whole image, which meant the more intricate your design was, the harder is was to carve. Once the lino had been carved, we coated it in a thin layer of paint, but I put too much paint onto mine so the image came out all smudge. Then we placed the lino onto a presser with extra paper on top as it would not work with out a lot of pressure. This form of printing, in my own opinion was definitely the hardest because i have had no previous experience in carving out of things. Lino printing can be compared to foam printing as they are basically the same thing, however foam printing is much easier and uses less resources so that anyone can use it, but lino printing uses resources that younger children could not use as they could injure themselves. Below are a few images of my lino print design.

Blind embossing was the simplest form of printing we did as it only took a few minutes to do. First of all we put the paper in a tray full of water as this would make the paper more malleable. We then used a cloth to take away some of the moisture off of the piece of paper to make it damp. Then we picked a few images that had been cut out of card as this made them thicker. then we placed the images onto the damp paper and put it through a roll presser as blind embossing needs a lot of pressure to work properly. In my own opinion i really like the effect that it gives,however i would like to create my own images/symbols if we did it again as it would make it my own. Blind embossing was different from the other printing techniques because it doesn't use any inks or colours, however it still creates a great outcome like the other techniques. Below are a few examples of blind embossing that i have found on the internet.