2014

potato prints

Students in a fabric printing class I'm teaching started the term by making potato prints last week...

...these prints were made on paper with fabric ink (it's cheaper to experiment on paper than fabric), but potato prints can make effective block prints on fabric.

potato prints!

Here are some colourful potato prints on cotton fabric, made by students on a fabric printing course I started teaching last week:

press printing and potato printing

I did some quick tests for community art classes that I taught this week.  The first method is polystyrene press printing.  It's a nice simple introduction to relief printing.  All you have to do is scratch your design into the polystyrene tile using a pen or pencil, roll some block printing ink onto the tile, then print it by placing the tile face down on a piece of paper and applying pressure with your hand or by rolling it with a clean roller.
You can get polystyrene tiles for craft use at www.homecrafts.co.uk 

Next I did some potato printing to get ready for a 'Crafts for Families' class that I started teaching this week.  Again, a simple but effective way of making a quick print.  I printed the heart stamp onto some plain cotton and then sewed it by hand into a little drawstring bag.  Parents can do this activity with their children - if the parent cuts out the potato, the kids can do the printing and then the parent make it into a bag for their child to carry around their toys, slippers or pyjamas.