Making collagraph plates

For the Second Saturday art group, I am going to be showing how to make and print collagraph plates.

I used craft foam as my base, and embellished it with buttons, lace, corrugated cardboard, etc.

My messy studio table with lots of the embellishments shown.

 My collagraph plate with everything glued down, I let the glue dry overnight.

 Here I have painted the plate using Golden Open Acrylics.

I used my Wizard, which is meant for die cutting (a Cuttlebug should work too), and it worked great as a printing press.  Here is the first pull. I had put a smaller piece of rubber mat underneath, and you can see the outline of it on this print.

I repainted it and ran it again with rubber mats covering the whole underside.

I made another plate that I will use to demo applying the paint at the Second Saturday meeting. (O darn, "Merry" is going to be backwards on the print!!! Those letters are double sided, maybe I can pull them off and re-glue?)

I do not think I will use craft foam as the base at our meeting. It makes the glue dry very slowly. Also, some of the embellishments pressed almost all the way through it, which could have damaged my rubber mats.  So I need to change the way I put the layers together for the press or use a different base, I will probably do both.