Polystyrene

As part of the workshop I taught in Salt Lake last month (check the last blog entry), I researched what substrates could receive ink beyond just paper. Fabric is an obvious solution that I've explored extensively, but I also found that polystyrene plastic takes acrylic screen ink wonderfully

Here's the skeleton girl screenprint on polystyrene with colored pencil, cut and ready to be reduced in the oven:



An illustration of just how much the polystyrene reduces:



One of the issues I'm coming ot understand is that the colors intensify--the individual marks are moved closer together, so the color appears more concentrated after reducing the image.

I added drilled the holes into the pieces to joint the doll after reducing using a 1/16th drill bit, and added a jump ring and silver chain:



This guy reduced a little more, maybe because I left it in longer:



I used plastic adhesive to attach a pin backing, making the little acrobat a brooch: