Printing Valentine pictures with love (and a lots of ink)

Printing is one of my favorite art techniques. And Styrofoam printing is such a great way to let even three-year-olds experience it – with wonderful results. Sometimes we use new Styrofoam plates, sometimes we use recycled ones (I feel much better about using these but it takes a while to get as many as you may need).

For this projects, I let the kids draw their flower with a pencil. It cannot be too sharp or they will poke a lot of holes in the Styrofoam. But they loved it! We talked about flowers, lines, patterns and repetition a little bit… and then I let them draw whatever flower they wanted. They even helped with the printing!

Great thing about this technique is that you can print it as many times as you wish! And if you want to use another color, just wash it off and do it again.

How to print?

After you have your picture ready, spread a little bit of block printing ink on a smooth surface (we use old placemats) with a hard-rubber roller. When you get an even layer of the ink on your roller, spread it onto the picture. Place a blank sheet of paper on top and go over it with another roller. 1, 2, 3 and peel the picture off. If you are not happy, do it again!

You can watch this video I made some time ago about the printing process (for a little bit more complex project that I did with my elementary-school-aged students):