How To: At Home Printmaking

If you’ve ever been curious about the printmaking process, this is an easy strategy to make prints at home. With just a hot glue gun, you can make some pretty cool images or use the technique in combination with others to create a mixed media piece.

Materials:

• Hot glue gun and a good amount of glue sticks (they go faster than you’d think)
• Printer paper (thinner paper is best for this method, or lightly misted thicker paper)
• Cardboard or plexiglass to lay your hot glue stencil on
• Ink or paint (I used Akua Intaglio Ink)
• Brayer
• Burnishing tool (a credit card or flat spoon works; I prefer just using my fingers!)
• Pencil
• Scissors

Step 1: Make a sketch on your cardboard or plexiglass; it can be anything you want! I recommend larger designs with less detail, as it’s hard to get fine lines with a hot glue gun.

Step 2: Outline your sketch with hot glue. Use a generous amount of glue here, as you want the glue to have enough surface area to catch ink.

Step 3: Lay out a small amount of ink/paint on palette paper or another piece of cardboard. Run your brayer through, picking it up every couple rolls, until it’s completely covered in ink.

Step 4: Cover your outline with ink/paint, using your brayer. It’ll take a couple prints to figure out how much ink/paint is the right amount, but keep in mind that if using ink: a little goes a long way!

Step 5: Place your paper on top of the stencil, and use your burnishing tool (or your fingers) to press your stencil into the paper. If using a thinner paper, you should start to see the outline on the side facing you.

Step 6: Check your print by holding it in place and lifting a corner, and continue burnishing as needed. Once you feel it’s done, pull it off your stencil and trim the paper as needed! Here are the three prints I made from the sun stencil earlier:

The fun part about this method is the ability to get creative with your images and stencils. Here are a few I’ve made:

Don’t worry if your prints don’t come up exactly how you imagined them; keep adjusting and remember that the excitement in printmaking is the process between you and the paper. Happy printing!

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