Homemade Cards

Here's an easy project for making homemade Christmas cards.

I did this printmaking project in art class yesterday with seven 2nd and 3rd graders.  We were all pleasantly surprised by the results.
I do not have pictures of the process due to the fact that I was the only adult in the room and all of the students had just come from our co-op Christmas party where there was a free-for-all cookie and soda buffet.  So I'm sure you understand.  ; )
It was really easy, though.  All you need is a styrofoam plate, scissors, a dull pencil, some paint or ink, and paper to print on.
We cut stamp-sized rectangles from the middle of the plate.  Each child planned out their simple design on scratch paper first.  Then they drew it onto the styrofoam with pencil.  Be careful...there's no erasing!

 Now it's time to coat the stamp evenly with ink.  I used printmaking ink and a small ink roller for these, but that's just because I already had them.  I guess you could probably use scrapbook ink.  Acrylic or thick tempera paint and a wide, soft paintbrush would work, too.  The only rule is that you can't use words in your design, because they will turn out completely backwards.  You can add the words later, once the paint dries.  I also think these would look nice cut out and glued to a contrasting color cardstock paper.  That's what Elijah is going to do with his prints.

I love the way they turned out!

All of these took less than 45 minutes, with seven hyper kids and very little cost.
Can't beat that!  : )



The rest of my kid's at home didn't want to be left out, so we did a few more today.  Less sweets involved, much calmer experience.

We used meat trays for the stamps.

Elijah figured out how to write backwards.

Ink and roller, meat tray and matching shirt.  : ) 

Roll out ink in the meat tray...gotta love those things.

Draw with a ball point pen, press pretty hard.

Roll on the ink and Stamp.

There ya go!

Merry stamping,
jen