Cardboard Collagraph Quotes

Collagraphy is a printmaking process in which materials are applied to a rigid surface (such as paperboard or wood), essentially creating a raised surface that will be inked and printed (unlike the kind of relief printing we do in fifth grade, where we carve into the plate). Many different materials can be used to create the raised surfaces/textures such as sandpaper, leaves and other natural objects, yarn and glue, etc. We used foam (not the colorful craft store foam, although that would work... we used thin white foam sheets that are usually used to scratch into for printmaking with younger kids) on chipboard for ours. For this project, 8th grade students were challenged to think of a quote, poem or saying that was personal or meant something to them, or that they just really liked. They were asked to write their quote using a font and letter arrangement that would reinforce its meaning. Students cut their letters out of the foam with scissors and Exacto knives:

Since printing always creates an image that is backwards from what you see on the plate, we had to make sure our words were glued down backwards to get a correctly oriented print. We accomplished this by coating a fresh piece of chip board with a spray adhesive and pressing it onto the arranged letters.... followed by a coating of acrylic medium to keep the chipboard from soaking in too much of the moisture from the printing ink and deteriorating. Students then chose colored inks that also "reinforced" their quotes and inked their plate before printing them on the colored paper of their choice:

We worked on this right up until the last day, and here are the prints of those that finished...