CARDINAL PRINT FOR CHRISTMAS CARDS

It's that time of the year again, time to make a Christmas card.

In the past, it's always a problem trying to get a good print on heavy card stock, for several reasons. So, this year I'm making a print separate from the Christmas card, and then I'll attach it to the card in someway that it will be easy to remove.  That way, if people want to keep just the print, maybe even frame it, they can.

Its going to be a bird print, in honor of seeing my first Cardinal while we were in Kentucky this year.  Beautiful birds, and it should be easy to make a distinctive print.

Drawing is done (that was the hardest part) and transferred to lino-block.

Carving of the drawing is done.

Time to print.

I printed a few of the drawing block, cleaned it up a bit, then transferred it to another lino-block and carved out the 'color' block.

This will be the 'color' block.

Then I got out the inks and stuff.  I'm using Akua Intaglio inks.  I decided on the paper and cut out more than enough, I'm using a nice Japanese paper, Kozo.  I need to make enough prints so that after I winnow out the bad ones I still have enough for my cards.

After I got both blocks cut out and the registration more or less good, I started printing the first run, the color block.

I cheated a little by putting the red and the green on the same block, using a little shield over the green part while rolling on the red.  Then carefully putting on the green - it worked great, one less block to deal with (and all the registration issues that go with that).

A stack of about 66 prints,

End of day one, I've got all the first pass done, yesterday.

Got an early start today, but I had to stop after about 20 prints and go get some pain-reliever before I could continue.  My shoulders and neck are really sore from yesterday, and it was giving me a headache.  But, when the Aleve kicked in, I was feeling great.

I started out using the baren, but it was tearing up the back of the paper and when using a sheet to protect the back I had to press too hard (and my neck did not like that).  So I switched to a wooden spoon.  

This is many as I got done before I had to go get some pain-reliever.

A couple of hours later - I had the 66 prints all done. And I got them done in plenty of time to still be able to take a walk before lunch (in the rain).

Here they are - all done!