Digital printing headache.

Having gathered my thirty sheets of beautiful seed paper, I geared myself up during my walk to College, to approach the digital printing technician about printing my two Metros using the printing suite.
I explained what I had in mind, including a very convincing seed paper show-and-tell.
After a LOT of 'umm-ing' 'aah-ing', and bending and scratching of my paper samples, the technician gave me the go-ahead to 'prepare the digital files'.

Note to self: Remember to pay attention during College Photoshop inductions in the future.

I I smell of linseed oil and my clothes are covered in paint. I do not have the faintest clue about 'preparing digital files'.
Stretching and preparing a canvas? Yes. Preparing digital files? No!

The technician reluctantly gave me a quick Photoshop demonstration and suggested that I scan the pages individually instead of photographing them. With a photograph I would have to position the camera and the page in the exact same place in each shot, whereas he assured me that a scan is a lot quicker and simpler to ensure they are all the same size/colour balance etc.
It sounded simple enough.
No such luck!
It took me two whole days to scan and edit every single Metro page for my two pieces. It was awful. The largest scanner in College is A3- not big enough to fit a whole piece of newsprint inside.
I took the staples out of the Metro and treated every opened page as a front and a back which I had to number to ensure the correct order for printing. Because the scanner in college is not big enough to accommodate a fully open tabloid sized piece of paper, I had to scan the pages in four separate sections -
Front R page**
Front L page**
Right R page **
Left L page **
Once all of the pages were scanned (14 pages x 4 = 56 scans for each paper...112 in total,) I then had to photomerge the lefts and rights together and create a FRONT and BACK folder. So eventually, I was left with a METRO1 folder and a METRO2 folder, each with 14 fronts and 14 backs inside, ready to be sent to the printers.

Here's an example of page 1 FRONT and page 1 BACK of one of the Metros I chose, to give you an idea of how I managed to 'prepare the digital files'.

PAGE 1 FRONT
PAGE 1 BACK


The files were all saved as PDF's and were ready to go.

The technician was very concerned that the seeds from the paper would fly out whilst being printed, so, I was assigned to what felt like the oldest printer in the world. I had seen it before, whirring and shuddering in the corner. Oh God! Hugely aware that I was about to put £150 worth of paper in this unreliable old thing, I decided to oversee the process.

It took about an hour to clean the ink jets. The printer was so old,that the ink was all coagulated and was beginning to solidify inside itself. Reassuringly, the technician informed me that the ink was vegetable based so should not harm the seeds in any way. Great, I thought, if it actually works!

Finally, we were ready to hand feed each piece of paper, doing all of the fronts first, then turning the paper over, and printing all of the backs in the same order.
The actual printing process happened incredibly quickly apart from a few hitches. I couldn't believe it! I had had such a nightmare up until this moment - not being able to make seed paper, being turned away from silk screening, not having access to the digital suite, the scanning marathon and editing when I had no clue what I was doing...and finally, it was all coming together mockingly quickly.
The end results were flawless - perfectly accurate and looking really slick.
I wanted to mimic Metro newspapers using seed infused paper?
I had certainly done that.

Paper:Check. Printing on it? Um...

I decided to have two Metro Newspapers for the event I was planning. From a practical point of view this was so that if one 'went wrong' in the process of producing it, I still had a 'back up'. From the point of view of their installation, it seemed more engaging to allow more than one person to see a piece at once. Giving people a choice in papers also would give them a greater selection of articles to plant.
Originally I had had an idea about collaborating all of the green-themed pages from a number of Metros and creating a whole new paper based only on that which would refer directly to my ecologically minded cause.
However, I decided to leave the newspapers as they were to keep them as recognisable and as 'real' as possible. I also wanted to include all of the stories of war, the economy, murder etc. so that participants of the event couldselect which pieces of news they wanted to see buried away.

It seems poetic to let beautiful wildflowers grow from terribly dismal news articles.

Now that I had found and ordered the seed paper, I simply had to establish how to print the articles and pictures on to it in order to make it look like a regular Metro newspaper.
Having had a rather stressful meeting with a print-making tutor in College, I was advised to go elsewhere for advice. The reason my meeting with the print-making tutor was so stressful was because I am stubborn and when someone tells me my idea is great, but impossible, I get quite annoyed. Nothing is impossible, just more challenging to resolve... he clearly didn't like being challenged like I do!
To cut a long story short, the simple fact is that it would have been far too difficult to silk-screen the newspapers and then match the correct colours for each and every article and advert inside. It would have been possible, but it would have taken far longer than I could wait.
Also, the ink used in silk screening is incredibly thick and hard once dry, which means that the little wildflower seeds would not be able to grow if the sheets of paper were covered up with layers of plastic-like material.
I was really deflated. I always have to come up with a Plan B as my Plan A's never pan out the way I see them in my head. The only other way that I could think of printing my papers was using a large digital printer. I would have to digitalise the Metros (probably scan the pages and Photomerge them together on Photoshop) or photograph each page with a good quality camera and upload the images to the printers that way. I just needed to get the Metros I was holding in my hand into a computer somehow so that when it was printed again, it would look as close to the original as possible.
I made my way to the digital printing suite in College to find it closed. The university only opens the printing room 3 days a week (don't get me started on how ridiculous it is for an art school to not have access to these basic facilities any time of the week...) and I would have to come back tomorrow.
Having been so elated yesterday and having spent £150 on seed-paper (!) it never occurred to me that it might not be possible to print on it.
The good news was that my paper was sitting waiting for me when I got home. It was beautiful - creamy and thick with the seeds clearly embedded right into thin layers. It felt really tactile too - I could just see people holding the Metro papers and suddenly feeling how lumpy the paper is as they feel the seeds. It's just what I had in mind.
I would have to go back into college tomorrow, paper in hand, and pray that the printers will allow me to use my own paper... looking at it again, it is awfully thick... I also hope the printers can cope with seeds springing out all over the place too...
Oh dear.
Let's not think about that until tomorrow.

So, 'seed-infused paper' you say?

I knew that I wanted to print/silk screen Metro newspapers on to seed-infused paper.

I knew that I wanted the paper to sprout indigenous wild flowers.
Hmm, but where on earth was I going to find this paper?
Firstly I tried making the paper. Having been assured that people 'hand make paper aaaall the time' by a friend, I decided to give it a go myself. How hard could it be?
I walked around Peckham Rye train station collecting abandoned Metro newspapers, which I decided I was going to recycle and use as the base of my seed paper.
The only other things I needed to make my hand made seed paper now, was glue, water, a regular food blender and really cheap seeds. Check, check check check...
It all went horribly wrong.
I liked the idea of making the paper using old Metros but unfortunately as soon as I added water and glue to the newspaper and blended it together I managed to produce a horrible grey mush as all of the ink from the newspaper had mixed together.. not to mention the poor blender which was wheezing and rumbling worryingly having had glue poured into it...
I thought about bleaching the mixture to make it paler but in doing that I would most probably kill the seeds which I wanted to add and probably upset the blender even more...
I tried to roll out some of the paper using instructions I found online, but once the paper had dried, it was extremely brittle and dusty and would certainly not hold out through the rough ride of silk-screening or digital printing.
Oh dear...and it seemed like such a good idea at the time.
There was only one thing left to do. I would have to commission somewhere to make the paper for me. I Googled 'wildflower seed-infused paper' and after a few clicks, there was my answer.
'Creative Paper Wales', a paper company based near Snowdonia, (Wales,) were selling 10 sheets of Seed Paper (wild meadow) for £50 !
' The paper is made with live wild meadow seeds...and can be planted to grow a beautiful meadow bouquet . . .It's paper and it's a garden all in one!'

Not only was the paper already made for me, (no more grey glue disaster mix, hurrah!) but the seeds inside the paper were exactly what I was looking for! Here is a list of the wildflower seeds included in this magical paper...

Meadow Floxtail

(Alopecurus pratensis)

Chamomile

(Anthemis nobilis)

Wild Carrot

(Daucus carota)

Meadowsweet

(Filipendula ulmaria 'Aurea')

Selfheal

(Prunella)

Red Campion

(Silene acaulis)

Yarrow

(Achillea Coronation Gold)

Common Poppy

(Papaver rhoeas)

Oxeye Daisy

(Leucanthemum vulgare)

Two whole Metros stuffed with those beautiful flowers. Wonderful!

The seed paper's size is 508mm x 635mm which is also perfect as I needed tabloid sized pieces (430mm x 280mm). Perfect!

As a Metro uses 14 pieces of newsprint per paper (I counted!), I was going to need the same for my Metgros. I ordered 3 batches of 10 sheets from Creative Paper Wales and slept soundly that night, quietly confident that this kooky idea might just work...

Now, to figure out how to print newspapers on to this paper...