We try not to buy a lot of things in plastic packages that are already in plastic packages. But sometimes it happens. Now I have a way to reuse that packaging that will never get recycled.

Plastic makes a great matrix for dry point. Many people use thin acetate sheets, like the stuff that was used with overheard projectors. You can run them through a printer and print your design on them, well plastic packaging can’t be run through a printer and it’s a bit thicker, but it works great.

I left the packaging intact, enjoying the idea of reuse juxtaposed with the living flowers and representation of death with the skull- on a polluting piece of plastic.

I can see where I went wrong with this plastic, areas didn’t need to be so deeply scraped and etched. The lines held up surprisingly well for many passes through the press. Generally dry point plates don’t last a long time, but I managed to run this one through 10 times for 8 good prints! (I managed to damage it when I scraped off ink with a credit card that had a bit of sand on it.)

I used an Exacto blade, upside down, blade pointed up so that the tip and back of the blade scraped through the plastic. It worked really well. The next plastic package I get I’ll be trying my needles.

You can see on the left of the skull where it is a bit over worked and the ink couldn’t be wiped away.Anyway, really excited by this particular reuse.

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