a change of pace

I decided to play with my lead type this time, oh boy!

bundle of punctuation, held together by masking tape

Since I don't have a press, I figured the best way to use it would be to bundle some sorts together and treat it similarly to block printing. Since I have a limiting selection of letters and I couldn't think of anything exciting to write at the time, I used larger pieces of punctuation with the intention of eventually doing some photoshopping and making a pattern out of it.

brayer wrapped in waxed paper

I used a brayer to ink the pieces, so I wouldn't get too much ink in places I didn't want it. It's my mother's brayer (how cute), and I have no idea what she uses it for, so I wrapped it in waxed paper so it would be easy for me to clean.

I used my screen printing ink since that's all I really had that's thick and water soluble, although ideally, I would have liked to use a little bit thicker ink.

stamping

rubbing

Since I was just pressing with my hands instead of a press, I wasn't quite sure what the best way to do it was. If I stamped it down, I couldn't get enough pressure for great coverage, but if I treated it like a rubbing, the paper wrinkled and there was more ink build up around the edges.

newspaper spacer

After a while, I decided to add a bit more on to my block since there wasn't much there. Newspaper was a great makeshift spacer to help hold it tight!

some printed pieces

When I scanned these guys, I ended up putting together good parts from a couple different little prints since I didn't really get any great ones.

Then, photoshop fun! It was actually more difficult to make this little guy into a pattern than I thought it would be, but it made a nice floral-looking pattern, below. They are sized for a desktop background (at least they're sized for my screen), click them if you want the full size.