Faux Screen Printing + Letterpress Tutorial : JulieKirk

A version of his tutorial appeared as a ‘Lesson from the Lily Pad’ feature on the Banana Frog blog: www.bananafrog.typepad.com [April 26 2010].

The projects in this tutorial were inspired by a certain style of art prints, stationary and greetings cards which have been drawing my attention in recent years. I discovered that, have more often than not, their clean graphic designs, had been produced by screen-printing and letter-press techniques.

I wanted to emulate those styles without having to buy screen-printing or letter press equipment and turned to my acrylic stamp collection instead.

After experimenting with masking and stencilling to achieve a similar bold feel, I achieved some great results now here’s how you can do the same ...

Copyright © Julie Kirk 2010 For Personal Use Only notesonpaper.blogspot.com

Using acrylic stamps to recreate the feel of screen-printed & letter-pressed graphics.

http://www.bananafrog.typepad.com/


Step 1: Select what size of card to stamp on.

You could make a large design to frame and hang on a wall ORYou could stamp directly on to a blank greetings card.

Using a low-tack masking tape, secure your card to a firm surface, [eg. a cutting mat]. It is important that your card does not move while you are stamping on it.

Step 2: Chose a shape to make into a stencil.

Clean simple shapes – such as a heart– work best for this technique.Even something as simple as a square can have a impressive effect.

Draw or print this shape onto paper and cut around it with a craft knife [or even cut a stencil using a die-cutting machine].

NOTE: It must be paper – not card – as the stencil has to lay almost flush to your base card to create a strong edge.

Step 3:Position your stencil on top of your base card and tape it in place on your hard surface.

Step 4: Select the stamps you want to feature.

Alphabets and sentiments work well. Here I’ve used a selection of Banana Frog alphas. Strong graphics and flowers also make a full, bold design.

If stamping text, create a focal point using one key word in a prominent place on the page. Highlight it further by using a contrasting coloured ink.

Position the first letter / image so that it stamps just over the


Step 5:

Once you’ve stamped your focal point – as I’ve stamped ‘Love’ – begin to fill in the spaces around it with other key words with the same theme.

The fonts I’ve used are:

Madfont [Large]; FT Rosecube and Bensfolk – all from Banana FrogI used various sizes of alpha stamps in order to fill in as much of the space inside the stencil as possible.

Tips:

Stamping your words one letter at a time – rather than in one go – will give you more control over the position of each letter. You don’t have to stamp full words every time. It will not spoil the over all effect if your words hang off the edge or appear incomplete.

Once you’ve finished stamping your text, if you notice any obvious white spaces, use some smaller designs to fill the gap – as I did here using some small hearts.

Step 6:

Once you’re happy with your stamped design, carefully remove your stencil.

What appeared as a messy and ragged edge will now emerge as a clean crisp outline filled with your design!

If you want to add some dimension – to give the feel of letter-press designs - raise an area of your design using 3D gloss / Glossy Accents. I did this to two of the hearts on my ‘Love’ card.


Further examples:

Stars:

Once you've got the basic idea of how to use your stamp sets to mimic screen-printed techniques and designs, you can explore any shape of stencil and combination of stamps you wish.

Here I cut a star-shaped stencil and filled the space using two of the blocks of text from the Banana Frog ‘Retro Space’ stamp set.

One reads ‘You are out of this world’ and the other ‘Reach for the Stars’ and I like the way that, even without being able to read the entire text in one go, it still provides a strong visual.

Again, I added contrast to the design by using various shades of inks.

Then I included a yellow highlight by fitting in a star which I added dimension to using Glossy Accents.

60:

Here I cut the number '60' from a sheet of paper for my stencil.

After cutting out the centres of the numbers I kept them in place using a tiny dot of Blu-Tack beneath them.

I then filled in the space using number stamps from several Banana Frog sets:

Bensfolk; Steelfish Outline Numbers and FT Rosecube

Stamp either the number of years, the age, or a significant year to create striking birthday or anniversary cards and gifts.

Finally, how about a larger design, one which can be framed and displayed on the wall? And what’s better than a heart filled with crafts?

I’d love to see how you adapt these techniques to create your own designs, share them by contacting me via my blog: http://notesonpaper.blogspot.com or http://twitter.com/nabview.

Happy stamping!


Julie x


Faux Screen Printing + Letterpress Tutorial : JulieKirk

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