These mind-blowingly beautiful Kaleidoscope Mandala Collagraphs were created in one of our Tween & Teen camps.
After studying the geometric symmetry of mandalas and radial designs, they cut and glued layers of very thin foam on large round poster board circles to create their printing plates. The foam makes a perfect material for collagraphs, but to ensure that the layers of foam didn’t start coming off during the printing process, we added a thick layer of Mod Podge to help “seal” them and let dry overnight. But we weren’t finished with these Kaleidoscope Mandala Collagraphs quite yet!
The next day we were so fascinated by how stunning the printing plates looked that we thought it would be fun to come up with a way to turn them into a work of art on their own! So after they printed them with black ink (the irony is we didn’t get any photos of their prints!!) – they added chalk pastel to the printing plates. It was a cool process, because the printing plates had a lot of texture from the layers of foam and the dried black block printing ink – there was a lot of tooth to grab the pigment in the chalk pastel. They outlined them with chalk to define the edge, an we mounted them on 22″x22″ black poster board. We go through a lot of black poster board around here!
These Kaleidoscope Mandala Collagraphs came out so beautiful! They look like sparkling gems or kaleidoscopes, each and every one of them!
Very nice work indeed!
Are these the coloured printings?or Are these the collages of foam you coloured?
Thank you Greet! These images are of the collagraph printing plates that they applied chalk pastel to after printing them with black ink. They created the plates but cutting small pieces of thin foam – most places at least 2 layers. They used a glue stick but to ensure the plates didn’t fall apart during the printing process, we gave them a thick coat of Mod Podge to seal them. The next day they inked and printed them (no photos) – and then we thought the printing plates looked so cool we came up with the idea for them to color them with chalk.
Hey! I love these! Can you send me some pics of the actual prints??! Thank you!
Oh no! I just re read your blurb and realize you didnt get any print pictures. Well, If I do this project with my middle school art students I will send you some. 🙂
What kind of ink did you use to print with?