On an experimental printmaking site I came across this technique.

I cut open a bubble-wrap lined postal envelope and laid both sides flat before applying acrylic paint to the surface of one. Initially I used a brayer but found it only caught the high points of the bubbles, so I moved to paint brushes.

After allowing the paint to dry I applied acrylic medium over the entire surface and immediately pressed paper onto the medium. Heavy books were placed on top and the ‘sandwich’ was left to fully dry overnight. The paper was then carefully peeled away from the bubble-wrap.

The result wasn’t quite what I expected and nothing like the online samples I’d seen. However, I immediately knew what I’d done wrong. The paper I had used was 250gsm, too thick to press into the plastic where the bubbles abutted. The air-filled bubble parts transferred easily but the surrounds remained on the wrapping.

In addition to this, the acrylic medium turned the result into a shiny plastic looking surface, quite good for creating something very robust such as book covers or similar if that’s what you’re after.

I took a matte acrylic paint and spread it liberally over the remaining dried paint on the packaging (shown above) and pressed a much lighter paper onto the surface, around 60-70gsm, and pressed my thumbs very carefully into all the crevices around the bubbles to ensure the paint would completely transfer this time. Again, books were stacked on top for 24 hours allowing the paint to fully dry.

The paper was carefully peeled away and a much better result was achieved.

I managed to pick up quite a bit of the remaining paint from the previous print and this one looks more interesting than the first piece.

I applied paint to the second piece of wrapping: first black lines then, when dry, yellow and green. This time, instead of acrylic medium or more paint over the back I used binder medium – which is totally matte – and went through the same process as before.

Above left is the paint dried on the bubble-wrap, the right side image shows the paint transferred to the paper. It came out extremely well.

This type of print transfer is commonly referred to as a ‘peel’ print. Layers of paint are applied to a surface – could be a gelli plate, bubble-wrap, acrylic sheet, plastic table cover or similar (you have to try surfaces to find out) – and allowed to dry. Wet media – such as acrylic medium, water-based varnish, binder medium or more paint – is applied over the surface of the dried layers and paper is firmly pressed onto the surface. As the wet media dries it lifts the painted layers off the print matrix and transfers it to the paper. Once everything is fully dry it should have nicely transferred/adhered to the paper.