Reduction Success! An Easy DIY Register

YouTube is the best school ever. I watched a few videos on how to do a reduction print, sat down at the dining table and did this little run of 8 prints. They all worked!  I'm using  speedball oil based inks on watercolor paper. This image is 6x12. I ran the blue, then the red without waiting for drying time last night. I recarved the block then ran the black this morning. 

The process was pretty easy. I'm ready to try it with my more complex plates now. Not sure what I'll do with 8 of these. I thought I'd lose some to 'trial and error, but nope, they all survived. 

How I registered the paper:

I used a big piece of foam paper (mat board or foam core would work), cut it the same size as my paper, centered my block on it and cut a frame just big enough to fit the block into.   This was my register. 

I found a tray with raised sides and square corners big enough to hold the register.  A picture frame with square corners would work.  The raised sides hold your paper in place when you start to print. 

I tucked my register tight into the upper left corner of the tray, then tucked the inked plate tight into the frame. 

I just took each print, lined up the edge of the paper into the upper edge of the frame and gently laid it down and did the transfer inside the frame.  After each pull I checked that everything was pushed tight into the upper left hand corner of my tray.  Pretty simple, but it worked.