Printing can be expensive so I always like to create and come up with alternative methods for printing. This method uses a few tools and materials from the recycle bin.

• Cardboard
• Wood glue, or other PVA glue OR even double sided tape
• Packing Tape
• Craft Knife
• Squeegee or Old Credit Card
• Scissors
• ​Silks Screen or Window Sheers

Cut out 2 to 3 equal sized pieces of cardboard. Stack them so that the corrugation alternates direction. Cut a whole in the center of one sheet. Use that to measure and cut the holes for the other sheets. Stick and glue them together with your glue of choice.

Place the stack under weight until dry.

Place your screen over the hole on one side of the stack. Tape down all 4 corners, getting the screen as snug as you can. Apply and spread the glue in a generously even coating. Be careful not to dribble glue into the middle of your screen.

Once this is glued down, let it dry. Remove the tape from the corners.

After your glue has dried. If you have used a real silk screen screen, you can use a hair drier or heat gun to get that screen really tight. You want it to sound like a loose drum, and you should be able to bounce a coin on it. If you are using a window sheer or other loose weave fabric, try to get it as tight as you can with the tape.

​Once the glue is dry, tape the whole thing up with packing tape or duct tape or whatever waterproof ish tape you have on hand.

Waterproofing is necessary if you hope to reusing these screens. If you aren’t planning on reusing them, no need to waterproof them. That said, what I like about these is that I’m making small screens- about the size of my hands. That can be printed with a credit card or other small squeegee. These are patch sized and work beautifully for pulling small patches. I’m also using up scraps of screen that would normally get trashed.

This is a screen in use. It prints both the 2025 and 2026 year for 2 slim patches. I’m using a small regular squeegee. This also uses wood glue as filler.

Some printed patches.

Patches, dried, heat set and cut to their individual year.

I make these patches every year to give out to my coworkers so that they can add the year to their work issued hoodies. Part of this exploration is to show the kids what they can do with their scraps but with a little bit of work and largely dollar tree supplies they can keep screen printing long after they leave the program.

All that said. I’m going to make some additional screen printed patches and try to figure out how to get them to iron on easily. I’ve tried e6000 iron on glue and it was terrible. (Just did a quick look and Heat n’Bond has gone way down in price and is actually pretty affordable now. BUT there are also 100s of off brands now available on Amazon for similar pricing. Wild. I remember spending a huge amount on Heat n’Bond ultimate hold back when I was bookbinding. Anyway, I have a way to make iron on patches and I wonder if I have any heat n’bond in my stash. I’m sure I do. I used to order the 5 yard rolls.)

I’m thinking some Artist, Artist-ish, No So Serious Artist, and a few other fun patches might be nice to put up on the shop. Anyone have any ideas for fun patches?

I wanted to explore some basic tools for making prints with trash. You don’t need a lot and many can be made with some simple materials. I’ll do another post about DIY tools. I’m making a comprehensive list here, BUT at the most basic kit you’ll need some sort of needle tool, a craft knife of some sort, ink, a way to apply ink, and a way to wipe away ink, as well as a way to print your plates. I’ll get into a whole post about presses and alternatives.

The most basic of tools is a needle stuck into a piece of wood. A sharp sewing needle stuck into a piece of medium sized dowel works great. (Yes this is DIY but also worth mentioning in the most basic of basic tools.) As for what size needle? I always been a fan of #20 sharp tapestry needles. These are nice and sharp and have a nice size. They don’t bend easily and work well for this purpose and as a basic awl.

The next most basic tool is a score and fold tool from Dollar Tree. They have another tool called a picker, more generally it’s called a vinyl weeder. It’s used to pick the junk out of your vinyl cuts. Either of these tools sport a sharp steel point that works for slicing a line into tetrapak and other trash.

The next step up is a tungsten carbide machinist’s scribe. These almost always arrive in a multipack with extra tips. In a machinist’s shop the tips dull and break but on paper it’ll take a long time for that tungsten carbide to dull. These feel like a pencil and are very sharp. These are now my go to for trash printmaking. They feel good and work really well.

The most traditional is the old twisted steel scribe. These are about the same price as the machinist’s scribe, but IMO less comfortable and more dangerous. I have drilled holes into corks to make the twisted steel a bit more comfortable. You usually get two tip sizes but I can never tell the difference between the two.

Another typical tool set you’ll see with tetrapak and trash printmaking are clay tools reimagined to make marks. The clay awl (and any other awl really) works great. But I find quite narrow and needing a cork handle added. The score tool is a great way of scratching in multiple lines into a soft material. Of course the score tools can be reshaped and even sharpened to get the line you want. The score tools if used for a longer period of time will need a cork handle added.

Another tool is basic sandpaper. 60 or 80 grit works great. The paper is layered over the image and then rubbed into the surface to create small pinpricks or you can lightly sand the surface to create small scratch marks in the surface. This works best with tetrapak and plastic layered materials and works less well with plain card materials. It’s best to use a light hand with the sandpaper. For $1.50 at DollarTree you can get all the sandpaper you’ll ever need for trash printmaking.

Another must have for trash printmaking is the handy Exacto or craft knife. This is a spot where I won’t recommend the DollarTree craft knife. They aren’t very good and break in use. A real Exacto is about $6 while you can get a “hobby knife” set for double that and get a bunch of handles and blades from Harbor Freight. The reason to get a real one or one from Harbor Freight is that the internals are metal and they’ll last.

Next knife for trash printmaking is what I call a click knife. Many call this a craft or utility knife or box cutter. This is a knife with a long blade that slides into the handle and the blades break off to get a new tip. The utility knife from DollarTree is surprisingly nice and you get a 3 pack. That said, the Olfa handles I own have never broken, feel comfortable and just work. Swapping out the blades is a piece of cake and the blades do not slip. You can often find the Olfa handles at Lowes and I’ve seen them at Michael’s. Replacement blades are cheap and easy to find.

Blades for these knives are available in 30 and 60 degree angles. The angle you’ll find the most often is the 60 degree, this has a sturdy point that is useful. The 30 degree point is more like an Exacto #11 pointed blade and more useful for detail work.

A self healing cutting mat is useful for cutting out shapes and making plates. Mini mats are available at DollarTree and work quite well. Larger and better mats are available at any other craft store.

A really useful tool is a piece of no slip cabinet liner. This can be useful if you have issues with your piece sliding around and slipping. I don’t always use this with trash printmaking as the squishiness can make it harder to carve pieces, but I do use it when inking. This is a spot where DollarTree saves some money. The shelf liner doesn’t need to be fancy and it does save skinny parts of plates from bending due to slipping. As it gets too inky it’ll stop working. It can be washed, but not dried in the dryer. I usually hand wash with dish soap and water and hang to dry.

Since I’ve started to think about inking the plates, paper is a totally necessary part of the inking process. I use a lot of old flyers, phone books, packaging paper, magazines, and catalogs. Anything with a matte absorbent surface is good for this. I have a stack of catalogues and magazines that I use and reuse. The ink dries out and I reuse that surface for as long as I can. I do end up putting a lot of the inky paper into recycling.

Another tool that you can make or DIY is scrim or tarlatan. This is not totally necessary IMO. Scrim is basically cheesecloth that has been starched or sized and dried flat. You can do this yourself by mixing up a batch of starch based glue and soaking cheese cloth, wringing it out, and drying it flat.

For inking, a small piece of cardboard can work to scrape ink into the lines. As can an old brush. If you have access to silicone caulking squeegees, these are great. My favorite tool are cheap soft toothbrushes from DollarTree. They do a great job scrubbing ink down into the lines and not applying too much ink.

While I’ve put together this comprehensive list, you really can just use what you have on hand. If you have something that can incise a line into the soft surface of your trash, you can print with tetrapak and other trash. An Exacto knife can do almost everything you need just by turning the blade up and down. Heck if you have a click knife, you have what you need.

I have been saving a lot of tetrapak- milk and stock containers. Basically anything lined on the inside with plastic. I realized pretty early on in this journey that a lot of food has an exterior lining of plastic or foil. Which obscenely makes the package not recyclable in my area, and I suspect most areas. Any foil printing in my municipality means it goes into the trash and not into recycling. Plastic is a bit less defined. I suspect that a lot of the plasticky stuff is actually ink based. We sure do like our packages to be glossy.

(From the standpoint of having worked retail, it also makes sense to have glossy packaging. It stand up better on the shelf and is less likely to collect dust. Those matte packages are a beast to keep clean and looking good.)

Anyway my collection of trash for printmaking has stretched out to include a lot of this packaging that may or may not be recyclable. For the purposes of this post I’m discussing things like toothpaste boxes, frozen food cartons, refrigerated food cartons, and some other toiletry boxes. An additional item is some boxes from electronics as well as tea and drink sachets. All of the boxes have either a plasticky or foil layer that will allow for scratching and peeling.

First step is to look and feel for a plastic or foil lining. This is the easiest step. Colgate and Crest sensitive toothpaste have foil and plastic lining. These are also a great size for smaller craft presses. The box from my Movo microphone and my wife’s favorite drink mixes also work great. The Arizona mix has a softer pulpier box.

The second step is to look at the thickness of the carton. Thinner cartons work best if thickened. I thicken mine by laminating the box to a manila file folder. I happen to have a ton of these from my old job but also at my current job from donations. (Also if you loved oak tag as a GenX child, manila folders have that same surface and thickness.) I laminate with waterproof wood glue. I roll the wood glue in a thick layer to the manila folder then apply the box to the glue, printed side of the carton up, inside of the carton to the glue. I put down a sheet of plastic or other paper run a clean hard rubber brayer over the mess. Finally I put the sandwich of carton, glue and folder under weight over night.

To roll out the glue I use a hard rubber roller. I roll out a thick but even coat. It’s important that the coating isn’t too thin, or the carton won’t stick well around the edges. I have found that with wood glue that it can be thinned with water to about 2 parts glue to 1 part water. For cartons and the manilla folders this is a better consistency for good adhesion.

The glue sandwich does a couple of things, it strengthens the carton and makes it more durable and able to pass through the press multiple times. It makes it easier and sturdier for inking. When shellac or polycrylic is applied it is less likely to warp.  An additional benefit is that the emboss during printing is deeper and looks more intense.

The next step before etching is to apply some cheap acrylic paint via a paint marker. I use a cheap paint marker because I have a lot of them. But if I was going to use acrylic paint I’d use a craft acrylic and roll it on. Putting an even single color down allows me to see what I’m working on without the interference I often get from the design of the packaging. The downside of the cheap acrylic paint marker is that when I apply shellac the paint marker lifts and smears. Despite what the marker maker claims, they are not permanent. With scrubbing the marker can be lifted with water. That said this works for me and I don’t mind it.

Not every carton will adhere with wood glue. Ramen cups or other cup noodles are great for using for printing, however the outer coating on these cups will cause the cup to peel away from the glue. Also any paint marker will not stick well and will scrape off as you work it with needles and other tools.

To get a carton like this to adhere properly the surface would need a light sanding with a medium grit sanding pad. For me putting that much work into the prep feels like I’m doing too much. PArt of the joy of using these trash materials is that they are trash. When I am sanding and gluing and laminating them I’m turning them into something more, which means they aren’t disposable trash. Suddenly I don’t want to waste them. It messes with my head and creeps into  my work, seizing up my creativity. Better to leave it as trash then to make it too special. That said, the manilla folders DO serve a purpose- they protect the plate from wear and tear as I am carting them back and forth from work to my home studio. They give me a space to keep things tidy and create quick on the go sketches, and keep them unscratched and unharmed.

Last summer I started what I have been calling “Operation Basement and Studio Clean Out.” All of this started because I was chatting with a friend about local studio spaces and how for much of my life having a studio outside of my house was a “life goal.” The art association I belong to started to rent out spaces in their basement and the cost wasn’t cheap but was affordable.

I took a look at the studio space at the art association and it was smaller than my home studio. It was however, totally ready to use and empty of all stuff.

I came home and immediately started to clean out my basement and art studio. Through COVID and WFH the studio AND basement in general had become a dumping ground for all manner of art supplies, tools, and stuff we didn’t know what to do with.

This summer I made a HUGE dent in the shear amount of crap. I bought storage totes and waterproof bins. I organized and I made the studio into a useable space, mostly again. The rest of the basement still needs more work. I still have to get rid of all those beer and wine brewing supplies. But again, more totes, more bins. Tools are in one location (mostly) and I’ve got some tool boxes to help me further organize them.

I removed many many bags of trash and recycling. I painfully witnessed why you’ve got to use those art supplies- I had so much paper that was moisture damaged and supplies that had dried out and been ruined through disuse.

I’m at the point where I need a few more bins and I need to do some more labeling. The work bench needs to be cleared. But the studio is almost ready for new lighting to be installed and for me to start the office clean out.

This post brough to you by the fact that I renewed my cleanout effort because I have been looking for a small plastic clamshell box that contains my dry point and etching tools. I cannot find it. I know it was on the work bench while I was first starting the organizing. I know I moved it. I know I thought, “Hey this should go with the printmaking supplies.” I have since looked in all the bins of printmaking supplies. It’s not there. I have looked in ALL of the bins. It’s not there. I even went so far as to look in my supplies at work.

It’s not there either.

I have looked on my desk in my office. Not there.

I have no idea where this small plastic container full of my collection of etching needles, scribes, and various other printing tools might be. I am lamenting my loss and considering purchasing some replacement tools.

I suspect that the moment the replacements arrive on my doorstep the little clamshell container with my collection of tolls will make an appearance.

My last post about tetrapak printing showed a REALLY successful print. I was super happy with how everything looked and how the colored came out. The lines were REALLY good. The ink got into places where I wanted it and wiped away well.

Then I attempted another print. This time with a butter carton. I’ve never tried to print with a butter carton before but I assumed it would work. I worked from an image that I’ve sketched and worked with before, one of Roque Bluffs near where I grew up. A place that is special to me. Anyway. I was careful with the scratching and working into the carton, too careful. I added in some watered down wood glue to make an interesting texture in the sky and on the water and then I sealed it with shellac. All this worked great.

Then I inked it. Again I’m using the caligo safwash etching ink. Good stuff, but I had to add quite a bit of tack reducer to get the ink to move the way I like it to. I am also thinking in the back of my head how do I make this ink work for kids? I need the ink to act like an etching ink, but I need it to wipe away easily enough that the kids don’t get frustrated. Or worse yet, bored. The wiping of ink was not the problem with my image.

The printing went really well. 

However I forgot a big part of any image- contrast. Some of the contrast could be changed through careful wiping of the plate in areas where I want more dark darks. What I ended up with in this image is a really pale washed out line work image that really doesn’t work. Yawn. It’s boring.

So what I learned from this print?

To be a little more daring with the contrast either in the making of the plate, or in the wiping of the ink. But mainly I learned that I can do a lot more cross hatching into this particular material and it’ll still print well. The little dots from my homemade tools look really great (more on those in another post)  and I really want to experiment with more tools for mark making.

So I went back into the plate and added in more torn areas, more cross hatching and generally added a lot more dark areas to this plate. I’ll also consider adding in more darks when I wipe the ink off. I think I can get some more really interesting things in this plate.

Another thing I learned is that this card is SUPER thin, but it does do a great emboss on the print. BUT it works SO much better when it is adhered to a backing piece of cardstock or thick paper, which is then cut to match the shape. I used a piece of manilla file folder, which worked really great.

Which brings me to another thing learned from this print. If I have a carton that can fit into a manila folder, I can glue it down, work the image and keep it in the folder while I”m working on it. This makes the scribing process so much more portable. That file folder keeps these delicate plates safe as I’m working!

I’m a big fan of gel plates, both homemade and retail. I’ve got a few of my own and A LOT of them at work. I try to have one per kid, as they get worn I can purchase new ones. I’ve written about how to take care of them but how to condition them before, but storage has always been an issue.

The Gelli Plate tin containers are top notch, but if you have to buy 14 of them, well that’s pretty pricey. I’ve looked into plastic clamshells, but most have mold lines. Cake pans with lids often have ridges around the edges. All of these things can damage the plate or deform it.

I was sent one of these for review:

That’s a SafeTect gel printing plate. I’ll write a full review of it at some point. Bu the important part is how it was shipped to me- in a 9x 11 box with 2 sheets of plastic on each side of the plate, a brayer tossed into the box.

The plastic sheets are a little larger than the plate and keep it from touching the sides. Brilliant.

It made me thinking. I normally store the gel plates in their original clamshells with the plastic sheet on one side, but I have some that are VERY old, and the clamshells shattered when I opened them.  They’ve been sitting out on a flat table.

I put two rolls of tape into  a 9×12 cardboard mailer. Then I put the gel plate with a piece of plastic on the backside into the box. It stays put and protects the top of the plate. The sides of the plate do not touch the sides of the box. It works so well!!! 

I put arrows for this side up on all these boxes and plan to put all my gel plates into boxes like this. The original plastic clamshells seem to always collapse onto my plate and leave bubbles.

This solution could be done with clean pizza boxes and better tape or even double sided tape. replace the tape as needed.

To get the plates out, you just peel them off the tape.

A brief personal update before getting into the art stuff. Hopefully I have dealt with the scammers. Paypal was not helpful. Ko-fi found nothing scammy in their profiles. It seems that the old school instant refund worked in my favor. Though I did report all of the accounts to Paypal and Ko-Fi.

Outside of that my wife had a minor surgery two weeks ago and I stayed home from work to make sure she was okay post surgery. I always find these occasions* stressful and anxiety provoking. That said, like the last time I spent with someone post surgery, I mostly cooked, cleaned and watched her sleep. And that’s what I did for the last week. She’s fine now and back to her usual self.

As is usual after the holidays and time spent away from work, I was behind on all work related things and it meant that when I returned I had more work to do than usual. very annoying. Also because I was distracted, I forgot to set up my out of office responder (for the surgery time off), so I returned to… a hundred emails and several surprise meetings.

art stuff

Apparently finding Spectrafix set off a deep dive on casein for me. I’ve been experimenting with casein based binders and glue since whenever I first posted about it, what 6 months ago?

My latest experiment was to test out washing soda versus borax and use a slightly more simple method of making the glue base. I tried this in my first round but because it requires TIME I got impatient and used a faster method for making my binder.

In this method you mix up the borax with the water, let it cool and then mix it in with casein powder that has not been hydrated, instead you mix in the borax water, mix well, and let it sit. Of course I cannot now find the artist’s blog where I first sourced this info. I really do need to take better digital notes when doing online research.

This produces a thick viscous glue that reminds me of methyl cellulose glues or rabbit skin glue. IYKYK.

The recipe for this method:

• 40g casein
• 16g borax
• 125ml water

Mix borax into water. Stir until all crystals are in solution. Let cool. Add to casein. Mix well. Let sit for at least 12 hours.

Then add in an equal amount of alcohol by volume. I prefer ethyl but isopropyl will work. Iso alcohol stinks and is toxic, so you have to be careful of spraying it. At this point the alcohol is acting to thin and preserve the casein glue.

To turn this into a fixative you’ll need to blend it with more alcohol. Roughly a 20% mix will create a mix that can be sprayed. For a 20% mix you put one measure of the casein mix and 4 measures of alcohol. I would do this in a large bottle and set it aside for a day.

The downside to this is that when the thick viscous glue is mixed with alcohol “stuff” settles out of the mix. I’m unclear as to WHAT is exactly settling out of the mix, but it looks like casein- it is white and sticky. Also the mix itself, once the alcohol to casein ratios get to about 4:1 turns whiteish, though dries clear. I wonder if the proteins are denaturing and dropping out of solution.

I suspect that this mix, once settled, is what you get in the Spectrafix concentrate bottles. I made a 20% solution of my DIY fix solution and it looks and responds much like real spectra fix. It’s not quite as strong a fixative as real spectra fix.

​I admit I began exploring this because of the expense of Spectrafix. I no longer had a spot to buy it locally (RIP A&C Saugus) and the added shipping costs from Blick jump the price up substantially.

I get why it is so expensive now. The making of it take time, it’s not overly labor intensive but it is very time intensive and I’m sure the experimentation to create a product that is shelf stable and effective was expensive.

I’ve got rollers that are older than I am, I inherited a few, bought a few at yard sales and have bought some new. If you take care of them they last and last. Every year I tend to add a few new brayers to my collection at work, they get damaged, but more often than not, someone borrows them from my studio space and I need to replace them.

Recently all but one of my 4 inch soft rubber brayers disappeared out of my studio space. I used to have a dozen. Now I have ONE!!!! I attempted to get people to return them, but alas, they are gone. This led me to a search for replacements.

My solid favorite for student work has always been the speedball soft pink rubber brayer. But the 4inch model with the plastic handle has doubled in price recently. I assume due to tarrifs, and I honestly didn’t want to spend that much of my budget replacing shit I already bought. So I searched on Amazon and found one that had decent reviews and ordered one, with a plan of returning it if it sucked and ordering 7 more if it was good.

Y’all I hit on a good one. This thing  has softer red rubber compared to the speedball and is a full $6 cheaper. The handle is wood and plated steel and it rolls so smoothly. Winner Winner.

It’s also available in a 6 inch model.

If you are interested, I use these black hard rubber brayers for my gel plates. I prefer the hard rubber for gel plates because they are easier to clean and get just as good a layer of acrylic paint onto the gel plate as a soft rubber roller.

I’m a big fan of experimenting with a variety of materials in my sketchbooks and art journaling. For me, learning how a materials is expressive is part of the journey of making art.

Every tool has it’s own mark and how the artist uses that tool is how it can become an expressive tool.

For this exercise I grabbed 4 random tools off my messy work surface: pencil, fat paint marker (15mm), brush tip marker, and a bold 1.0mm Uniball 207 black gel pen. I then headed over to EarthsWorld on instagram and decided to draw this woman 4 times.

Here are the spreads in my sketchbook. Each one is unique and as artists we can use the marks our tools make to capture different feelings and looks in our art. 

In my opinion the pencil feels unfinished as a sketch. It’s loose and lacks depth.

The black thick paint marker is bold and graphic. It lacks the detail of the pencil and finer materials but it has punch that would allow it to stand out on a brightly colored background, where the pencil would wash away. The thick black paint marker is used on it’s corners and edges to get a variety of lines, not just a simple flat black line.

The brush tip marker is purple, and it layers. So there are darker areas of purple and lighter areas. It has the punchiness of the black but more depth to the darker areas. It’s less flattened. If the marker were gray it would stand out on a lot of colored backgrounds. The brush tip gives the image a softness that the thick black paint marker lacks. There are more details here too.

Finally (for this experiment) I used that bold Uniball 207 gel pen. Line many pens the line is a single width (though with experience I can tell you that if I get the right angle on the pen, I can get a thinner scratchy line that is broken up) The amount of detail possible with a pen like this is pretty unmatched, though to be fair I was not looking for perfect detail here, merely to capture SOME of the potential of a pen line. You can layer and cross hatch and get some remarkable details with a gel pen.

I think that using a combo of materials really unlocks mood and feeling when it relates to the look of a pen or marker or pencil. It’s worth noting here that the paper used can really change how a material looks and we respond to it. For instance paint markers on rough paper look a lot different than they do on this pretty smooth paper. Pencil looks different on rougher or colored papers. Some pens won’t make much of a marker on rough paper.

Materials need to match one another but also the mood you are attempting to explore.