@elephantbitterhead I'm working on a bigger piece right now! Yeah with hard ground, it dries to a stiff vinyl like surface, and then you draw in it with a sharp tipped stylus to create lines and expose the copper underneath, so when you put it in acid the acid etches the exposed copper and the ground blocks everything else out. You get very even fine lines. With soft ground it's a lot more malleable like soft wax, so yeah! I put the lace over the prepared plate and put it through the press, and the lace was pushed into the ground enough to expose the copper underneath and pull up the extra ground. It's a really cool technique but it's a one shot kind of thing, once the lace (or leaves or whatever) gets pressed into the ground, if it doesn't work because of pressure or stiffness of the ground, you have to clean the plate with spirits and toss the material and start over. So if this didn't work I'd have to stitch a new lace piece and try again because it would be permeated with the ground. But it worked! I did soft ground in high school with open weave fabric but this is the first time I've done it since then so I was reeeeaaaaal nervous it wouldn't work.
(Basically you want fine lines etched into the copper so that the ink has something to settle into and then get squeezed out of, if your lines are too thick or you have large flat areas etched, the ink won"t stay in. I was worried that the rat would just be one big open mess but there was enough texture that etched that it worked, gave the ink some place to sit.)
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