My Celtic Animal Collagraphs and a few Cats

I love making small celtic animal aceos using up to 3 layers of cartridge paper which I score into and draw onto to produce the effects. One sealed with button polish these are intaglio printed which means I wiped the ink off the surface and used dampened paper to take the ink out of the lines and recesses when printed on my Sizzix Big Shot. Once dry they are coloured with Prismacolor crayons. I love the plates too as well as the prints.

Collagraph influenced by Vicky Oldfield

I first saw Vicky Oldfield's work in a gallery and I loved the effect of the textured line in her work so I decided to try her technique. As I didn't have any carborundum I used marble dust. She is featured in a video which gave me enough information to produce this small 'vicky oldield' collagraph using my sizzix big shot to print it. I had stamped some small roses onto tissue paper and decided to use them as chine colle. This was for convenience and I don't like the yellow colour choice for these but this was really only a learning exercise. I do like the white dots I made with a biro end dipped in ink.

It was fun and I need to work on some of my own designs now.

Collagraph printmaking...testing coffee grounds and paprika to create a textured line.

I like being able to make small aceo size collagraphs and I print them on my Sizzix Big Shot. I usually use layered card quite successfully but I wanted to try something new. I have used marble dust and volcanic ash with wood glue in the past to create an ink retaining line but I wanted to get a smoother effect. Carborundum is normally used for this and I need to order some but in the meantime I decided to try coffee grounds which Belinda del Pesco mentions in her blog.

I dried some used coffee grounds but they looked very granular and I wanted a finer texture so a quick search in the cupboard and I decided to try paprika..... here are the results, an added bonus is that the paprika also adds a redish colour...