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!