Little Hiccups: Halloween Cards

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Halloween Cards

This year Ava and I made Halloween cards to send to her friends.

I thought we'd go for a printing technique that I haven't used in a really long time, so rather than printing the cards from our computer I made a linoleum block print from one of Ava's drawing.

We started with Ava's drawing of herself as a vampire from Hotel Transylvania. You can see the original drawing below. I resized it a little in photoshop and then traced over the print out to transfer it onto the linoleum block. Then it was time for the fun part: the carving. Ava was really keen to help out with this part but she had to give it a miss given how sharp the carving tools are and how easy it could be for her to a) cut herself, b) mess up the printing block or c) all of the above.

I hadn't done any linoleum block carving for about 15 years so I was a little concerned that it might take a really long time for me to get through it but in actual fact it was all done within a few hours. Much easier than I had expected and I found it quite a relaxing way to spend an evening.

Once the block was carved out it was time to make the prints. This was something that Ava could help out with. We rolled the ink onto the printing block and then pressed the block down onto some card. Voila, Ava Vampire prints!