Art Journal Every Day: Scratch Foam Prints

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  There is a flickr group for sharing right here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it.  If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post.  Thanks!

I've been experimenting with some ways to get color and pattern into my art journal quickly and easily.  One of those experiments involves a product called "Scratch Foam."  Essentially, it's a really thin and large sheet of styrofoam.  People often use the styrofoam trays that vegetables or meat come on as printing plates.  This is simply a packaged product that does the same thing.

Essentially, you draw on the plate with a ballpoint pen, a skewer -- something pointy -- which indents the styrofoam.  Then you ink up the plate with paint or printing ink.  The ink only goes on the raised portion of the plate.  When you press a piece of paper to the plate you get an easy peasey print!

I used a ballpoint pen to doodle into the plate and created two really cool patterns.

You can see that wherever I indented (black on the plate) is white on my print!  Both of the examples above were printed onto smooth cardstock.  The prints look a bit more distressed when printed in my art journal (which has more texture):

And in this example I've printed the two plates side-by-side using the same colors of paint:

Using the same colors of paint almost makes the two prints look like they flow together.

A very quick and easy way to add pattern and color to a blank journal spread!

Have you ever tried Scratch Foam?  What do you think?

Here is this week's linky list:

Thanks for stopping by!