Hi I'm Leoni from Spines and Splines. Today I'm going to show you a couple of different ways to prepare your paper for entalioprinting. Paper for etching stri-points and other types of entalioprints needs to be damp so that when you put it under pressure it's flexible enough to push into the grooves on your plate and pull the ink out. My favorite method for soaking my paper is to spray each sheet with a mist of water then wrap it in plastic and leave it to overnight. This gives the water that is sprayed onto the surface time to soak through the paper leaving it damp but not wet. As you can see in the video I'm using cling film for this as it's what I had available but a really good option is to reuse a large ziplock bag to avoid single-use plastics. I like this spray and wrap method as it doesn't use very much water and it's especially handy if you don't have a lot of space or running water in your studio. You do need to be organised for this method to work well though and it works best if you prepare your paper the night before. If you run out of time or decide not to print you'll need to dry out the paper the next day. If you forget about it it will go moldy. To bust a little myth while I finish up here I've heard some people say that you need damp paper to print relief prints. For most cases this just isn't true. Relief prints pick up ink from the surface of the block so there's no need for the paper to be wet to do this. Some methods like Japanese mock or kuhanga do require damp paper but most of the time you'll be fine with dry paper for relief printing. The second method that you can use to dampen your paper is to soak it in a bath of water. You just put some water in a clean container that's big enough to hold your paper and then you add each sheet one piece at a time making sure that each piece of paper is fully submerged in the water. This method is great if you're depressed for time as you don't need to leave the paper soaking overnight and you can just set it all up as you start to print for the day. The downsides are that it does take up more space and it uses a lot more water. It's a bit messier and you'll need to prepare clean paper for blotting before you begin. You take each piece of paper out of the bath as you print and you need to remove the excess water from the surface with either blotting paper or clean newsprint. While I finish up here it seems like a good time for a patreon reminder. I like to keep these videos free so that anyone can learn about print making but if you find them useful I'd love it if you could join me on patreon. Every little bit of support helps me make these videos better. If you enjoyed this one please like, subscribe, share and comment. I've listed all the materials that I used in the description and you'll also find links there for my website, my patreon, my Facebook page, my Instagram, my red bubble shop and some affiliate links to art stores. Thanks for watching, cheers!