Blog 2 (prompt 8)

 The first thing that we learned during this project was printing and the steps that went into it. We used a stencil with different designs burned onto it to print greeting cards, cup sleeves, and notebooks. The process for printing is first deciding which color paper to use and which color ink to go with it. Next we taped off other sections of our stencil to prevent bleeding from other designs we aren't printing, and locked it into the printing press. Then we put a piece of paper under the stencil, put ink on top, and used a squeegee to pull the ink across the paper. After we take the paper out of the press, we determine if we will use it or throw it out. Misprints can happen if ink dries in the stencil, the stencil burned wrong, or if you just did not do the pull correctly which is typically what happens. Sometimes while printing, I would forget to put a paper under the press first entirely and end up just printing onto the table, but when we have our finished prints, we let them dry, and then cut out cards and put them into their packaging. When we want to print something else or use a different ink, we will clean off the stencil with a hose and let it dry before the next series of prints. A lot can go wrong during printing, but we picked up the process pretty quickly and we were printing dozens of greeting cards a day and didn't get upset by misprints which happened often. Our final project is going to involve all of these things since we will be creating stencils with our own designs and making prints on mugs, shirts, cards, stickers, and whatever we're able to print on.