Try making a gingerbread man print

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  What you need

  • Polystyrene – try a pizza base, plate or container made of polystyrene. You can also buy polystyrene blocks or rolls.

  • Water-based printing ink (or you could water down acrylic paint, but this won’t give you as good a result). High contrast colours work best!

  • Something to roll the paint or ink onto – a paint tray, a flat, plastic board, a piece of cardboard or a glass tile.

  • A cookie cutter or two. If you want to be festive, try a tree, gingerbread man, star or snowflake.

  • A rubber roller.

  • Decorations like buttons, stickers or glitter glue.

  • Greaseproof paper for protecting your work surface.

  • Paper or card.

  • An apron.

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  1. Make your marks using cookie cutters

  Choose which cookie cutter you are going to use.

  Place it on your polystyrene block where you want the line to go and press down firmly.

  You may need to go over the line with a pencil if it hasn’t made a deep enough indentation.

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  2. Ink up your polystyrene block

  Squeeze a small amount of ink into your tray.

  Make sure there’s not too much: you only need enough to cover the roller in a thin, even way. Roll the ink out until it is evenly and thinly spread all over your roller.

  Then, start transferring the ink onto your polystyrene block. The ink should not be thick enough to seep into the cookie cutter indentation. Instead, those lines should remain white.

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  3. Reveal your print

  After pressing down firmly with a spoon, clean rolling pin or rubber roller, carefully peel back your paper to reveal the print.

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  4. Add some decoration!

  Next, add some buttons and a smile using stickers or glitter glue.

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  5. Hang it up to dry or give your print as a gift!

  Want to try another cookie cutter? Read on to see more ideas.

Make a flurry of snowflakes

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  1. Make your marks using cookie cutters

  Make marks in the polystyrene by pressing down firmly with your cookie cutter.

  You can layer the snowflakes by marking the polystyrene multiple times.

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  2. Ink up your polystyrene block

  Roll out your ink in the ink tray.

  Then, use your roller to transfer the ink onto your printing block. Make sure it’s nice and even and not too thick.

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  3. Peel back to reveal your print

  You can peel back the paper or polystyrene block to reveal your relief print!

You can also try printing using an old rolling pin

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  1. Stick your shapes to the rolling pin

  Think about how they will appear when you roll the pin across some paper.

  You might want to cut out a longer shape that wraps around the pin, as well as some standalone shapes.

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  2. Use a brush to transfer your ink to the rolling pin

  Instead of using a roller, use a brush to put the ink onto the pin.

  You might want to roll the pin back and forth on some greaseproof paper before you print with it to get rid of any excess.

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  3. Roll the rolling pin onto some paper

  You can make a long banner or a short design. Roll it further to lengthen the design – but you might run out of ink!

  If you have to reapply ink, try to line up the rolling pin with the design you’ve already created.