Support our local restaurants and use the lid from a standard foam takeout box.

If you have Styrofoam plates those work wonderfully and they are inexpensive.

Even a broken pencil, chopstick or anything with a blunt point will work.

heavy weight like watercolor or cardstock is best, but any white, lined or light colored paper will work - glossy paper might not work well - but this process is repetitive and you can try on multiple surfaces.

Any water soluable marker will work - NO Permanent markers like sharpies.

A little cup to re-wet the rag is also helpful.

• Cut out a usable flat surface

• You can make any shape you would like

• This will become your "print plate"

Trace the shape of your Styrofoam onto a piece of paper

• This is where you can start your design

You may also free draw directly onto the foam if you would like

• Caution if you have limited pieces of foam to work on - planning a design offers you the opportunity to experiment with a variety of compositions.

Your design can be anything, but keep the following tips in mind:

• Larger areas and simplified shapes with read better in the end product

• Text will appear backwards unless you mirror it before step 2 of drawing our image on the Styrofoam (think of a stamp)

Having a hard time coming up with a design?

• To the left is a coloring book page I found online from "Love From Alaska" - a local artist named Amy Kruse offered it up as a free page on her Facebook page. Feel free to search for free use images!

Place the image over the Styrofoam and trace with pressure

• Enough pressure to create a dent in the foam

• I am using a pen so i can see the difference in an area I have and have not yet traced onto the foam

• Yes the paper might tear from the pressure - that's OK

• The dent will need to be traced over again with more pressure after removing the image

• The dented areas will read as white lines on the finished print

Simply color the foam surface

• You may notice that the color is just "floating" on the surface of the foam or the colors don't appear as dark as you might want - this is OK, the foam is not absorbing the color and it will transfer to the paper in the printing process

• The colors smear and can be blended

• I chose to put black marker in the indented lines on the abstract heart - this should result in a white line with black on either side!

• At this point your print-plate is ready to be printed and you can even leave it alone - take a break - there isn't a rush to jump to print it (other than the excitement of seeing how it turns out!)

• Wash your hands after coloring to prevent messy fingerprints in the printing process

• Using a wet rag, paper towel or sponge you will saturate the paper you want to print on

• I am using watercolor paper here

• The paper will have a light sheen to it but not be dripping with water

• The water "reactivates" the water based markers and allows for transfer of the color from the foam to the paper.

• You can print on any absorbent paper (not glossy)

• Try printing you own cards

• Place the dampened paper on top of the print plate

• Press the paper down on the foam

• After thoroughly pressing the paper down, hold it in place and peek at it to ensure you haven't missed any areas

• Fully lift the printed paper off of the plate

This end result of the abstract heart is more "crisp" because the paper was not as wet as the mountain print. I made this choice intentionally to preserve the geometric shapes. You might notice the very center of the heart print is a little blurry - this is from one accidental drip of water onto the foam plate as I was wetting the paper.