Printmaking Ornaments

 

Description: For this project, we learned about the history of printmaking and the tools and terms that go with and into making prints. For this printmkaing, we created ornaments. We sketched two different ornament designs that represented us on a piece of paper. I chose to draw mountains because I love to hike and think the mountains are pretty. My second design I drew swirls and dots that represent ornaments that my family uses on the tree for Christmas. We then drew our designs on styrofoam by putting our drawing on top of it and traced our drawing to transfer it to the styrofoam. When tracing, we had to trace firmly to make sure that our designs indented into the styrofoam for our designs to show through. When we were done tracing, we cut out our ornaments. Then we went to stations where the ink was all ready for us. We used a brayer and rolled it in ink and then rolled it onto our styrofoam design. We then put the inked design on our piece of construction paper and put a blank piece of paper over it to make sure ink didn't get on anything or everywhere. We then used a clean brayer to firmly roll over the styrofoam to transfer it onto the construction paper. We had to do this multiple times to make sure the ink was even and that everything transfered nicely. We did this twice with our own print in either red or blue and then traded with our partner's print in the opposite color. Once we had four ornaments on our paper, we drew strings to the ornaments. 

Extension Activity: An extension activity would be to have students do two ornaments of their own instead of trading with a partner. They would then write a short paragraph explaining the designs that they chose and the meaning behind them. Students can then share with the class their designs and reasonings if they want to as well.