Making books (summer school) - 2

On the topic of mark making, many of the methods mentioned were ones I knew about - cutting rubber stamps, using the sewing machine without thread, inking up letter shapes, heat transfer (ironing) a carbon-based photocopy, using carbon paper, monoprinting with masked-off areas...
But embossing was new to me. This consisted of placing "lumpy" objects on damp paper, then putting it into the nipping press between boards, with a sponge cushion -and squeeeezing -
Another new method with nice possibilities uses a cutout (could be from a magazine), and a piece of card slightly larger. The picture is glued down, the card put on top, and it goes into the nipping press -- and comes out with the picture subtley outlined in shadow, made by the card.Apart from the couple of offset monoprints of a feather (on the brown paper), I used the white ink to pattern areas of the paper. On the glass the rolled-out ink went into bubble patterns, and I simply laid areas of the off-white paper onto it. Both sides of the paper got the patterning. And I tried some drawing on the back of the newsprint - again, the white makes a very subtle (too subtle?) effect -
Apart from its strange behaviour on the glass, the ink took ages to dry.

Other people tried printing with feathers too, and some bit of this collage idea - if not all of it - was rescued from the bin. Rescuing unwanted (but interesting!) paper from bins became a bit of an obsession with me - to the point where people from the printmaking class would save their offcuts and bring them to me - I shall treasure them and use them wisely ....
The room may have looked like this at lunchtime -but at the end of the day it's good to leave things in readiness for tomorrow -
By the way, one of my finds on a walk in the garden - apart from the feathers and bits of bark - was a twisted up old metal plant marker, which I tried using for printing (unsuccessfully). It had some lettering still visible on it - X CUPRES... - I thought this might lead to an idea for a book about plants or gardens, so did a bit of internet research. The plant was probably a leylandii, the much-hated monster hedging tree, which has an interesting history and is related to other kinds of cypress trees. But the idea didn't really gel -
Something much more jolly was waiting round the corner...