I put together a little roller printing workshop for my niece Mackenzie.
First explaining a little about roller printing which is really quite vast and only dependant on how experimental and creative one would like to be.
I thought we could do 3 samples one with organic matter, one with paper and one with wire.
We took some copper sheet I had which was thicker than we needed for the job so to start off the workshop I introduced Mackenzie to the rolling mill through rolling down the copper from 2mm to 1mm thick sheet. Showing her the process of annealing, cleaning and carefully drying the copper sheet before rolling. Talking to her about the rolling mill how it works does and don'ts and its valued presence in the studio.
Once we rolled down the copper we divided it into three sections and cut them out. We then started to plan out how Mackenzie would like the roller print pattens to be. We experimented with the paper using some sample patterns I had purchase and then we took some more paper and used different size whole punches to explore the possibilities : brail, flowers, initials....
Then we moved onto the wire and Mackenzie used some round nose pliers to shape the wire for the wire roller print along with using some twisted and untwisted stainless steel cable.
And then the magic but only with careful attention to the tension, and lining up the sandwiched copper and patterned material in-between two sheets of brass which can be a little tricky.
And our final prints which stirs the inspiration to create a piece of jewellery....
