Christmas Print 2015!

Every year for the last several (8?) years I have made a Christmas print. They often contain cats or snowy scenes. Generally they have the year as part of the print, and red, black, light blue are common colors I use.  Hopefully when we unpack I can find copies of the previous prints, and next year find a good way to display them at Christmas time, with room to add on.

They are generally block prints, but some years have been screen printed. Here is last years which was a screen print. (I hand painted the stencil).

2007 & 2008 block prints...

This year with my screen printing stuff packed up, I decided to go with block printing. I sketched many rough designs, trying to come up with a good idea. Three Little Kittens? A Loon? Owl? Elephant? A print with multiple ornaments? I had originally thought of a simple fireplace print. Then when we had more house drama and I thought we may never close on the house I gave up on the idea and then started trying to come up with others. Now that we officially got the house, I decided to stick with the fireplace. To add the usual Upsidedown Cat charm, I added a bear in a winter sweater and some Christmas decor on the mantle (Stay tuned for a later post.,,!)

Anyway. In the midst of deep cleaning the house, I knew I had to get this print done because we give it to family and friends as our Christmas card. So.. I started carving, and today with a free afternoon, I printed the red. This block was a little bigger than some cards I have made. It was a little bendy and my brayer is smaller than the block so I had to be more careful about inking the block to make it even.

Color two, the black layer, was hard to line up... I was feeling really frustrated with the first several prints (Hint: use your more messed up first layer prints as practice prints with the 2nd layer!). I traced around my block on a piece of white paper, cut out the rectangle and carefully used the paper frame as a pretty close guide of where to place my block, trying to match two corners as best I could before letting the block touch the paper. It worked well and I'm pleased that most of the prints turned out well. In printmaking you generally lose some prints with each new color/layer you have, and plan accordingly so hopefully you will end up with the amount you want. I did not count them yet, but I think I printed about 50.

Here is the final result:

Perhaps some day if I have free time (haha, so many quilts on my list), I may get inspired to make some cards to sell. Could be a cool Upsidedown Cat merch item and something I could maybe sell online. We'll see... It would be good if I did something related to printmaking, since I took a lot of classes, and it can be used in so many ways.