Printmaking with Foam Stickers

I've seen lots of cute ideas for doing printmaking with kids.  I had planned on doing one that involved drawing your design on the "printing plate" with Elmer's glue.  I changed my mind last minute because my son did not seem to be in a patient mood at the time, and I knew the waiting for the glue to dry to finish later was not going to go over well.

Instead, we made our designs with foam stickers and they turned out great!!

First, we decorated small sheets of paper with our foam stickers to be our "printing plates".

Then we covered them with paint (using a small paint roller worked well).

We placed the painted design on our paper.

Then we carefully peeled off the "printing plate" to reveal the design.

Then we repeated the process with another color of paint.  My son really liked the idea that he could print the design he made with different colors.  (The third and fourth uses of the same "printing plate" though tended to result in wet flimsy paper and a dark brownish/black paint color since we didn't wait for it to dry in between)

Things I'd do differently next time:

* Use a thicker paper for the "printing plate", maybe even light weight cardboard (from a cereal box etc) to make the printing easier.

* Use even smaller "printing plate" sheets to help keep the designs simpler and allow for more printing.

We did try one with our letter foam stickers but were limited on what we could spell since the letters would print mirror images.  "MOM" works well :)