Collagraph Printing and Winter Seedlings

I have some collagraph prints lying around on my desk this morning - I've been wanting to try this technique for ages and used my XCut machine to print with after finding a Facebook group all about it.  It's a great way of making prints without investing in a proper press and I am quite pleased with the results.  I kept the plates very simple - I didn't want to invest a lot of time and effort in them if it was going to be a disaster!  I also kept to my current theme of the winter garden.

These first prints turned out quite well and I was able to take several copies from each plate.  I found the only print I had real problems with was the minimalist one (bottom of first photo) - it smudged from the very first print and all subsequent ones - just proving that I'm not cut out for clean and simple!!

 

I decided to try a little more detail and scratched this leaf into the surface of some board.  I only had 3 successful prints with this and then the board deteriorated beyond use, but it's all a learning curve!

These are the used plates, some still strong enough for another print run but a couple have had it. 

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW 

The Garden in Winter

 I'm still in a wintery frame of mind, helped along by the freezing conditions we are expecting later today!  I'm holding back on this sketchbook page for a while as I'm liking the simplicity of it at the moment - I'm good at over-egging the cake so I'm trying to stop myself flinging everything at it!

I made a birthday card for my brother-in-law recently - he loves working with wood and is very creative so I tried doing a wood inlay card using some wood effect papers that I've had in my stash for years, and a medallion die.  I was hoping for a Morroccan look to it, but he referred to it as lace so not quite the response I was hoping for.  Still, I had fun making it!!

I'm linking up with Julia this week over at WOYWW.