Creative Block Prints

I groan as my dad shakes me, saying, “It’s seven thirty, time to get up!” I reluctantly slide out of my cozy bed, and get dressed. Then I look at the calendar and see that it is Wednesday. I suddenly rush downstairs to the kitchen to see what we have to eat. It seems like ages before I finally head out the door and walk to school. Morning meeting seems like forever. When it is over I run to our classroom. There is our art teacher, Ms. Shira, spreading newspaper and inks on the table. I flop into a seat, relieved that she could come today.

We have been making block prints with inks and cloth, mixing the colors into beautiful shades of blue, purple, green and red, and transferring them to paper and cloth. We first had to make the prints, taking tabs of boring, plain gray linoleum and carving lovely pictures and designs on them and using them to print. When they are printed on rainbow paper the colors of the print and of the paper blend and mix to make colors that make your mouth water.

We are now making pillows, choosing what inks go well with what cloths, pricking our fingers with needles and pins. We eagerly jam our stuffing into the pillows, making them plump and huggable. When we have stuffed them to our satisfaction, we have to sew up the seam. Tricky job. Involving many “Ow!”s and “Ouch!”s, the seams are complete and, ta-da, we have pillows. Fluffy, soft, pretty, and plump, these pillows are fun to make!

We have also used cardboard to make block prints. We first drew our outlines of whatever picture we were making, animals, people, or just designs. We cut them out, choosing parts to be separated from the rest. We then glued them to a background and spread a glue over it to protect it when we printed. There are so many things you can make block prints with, and many of them are so different!