Playing with Gelli

Just last week I became the proud owner of a gel printing plate by Gelli Arts, woohoo! I first saw this on Dina Wakley's blog where Dina showed some of her fabulous prints she made with this. Being a total background junkie I just HAD to have one of these and have a go myself.

The idea of mono-printing itself isn't new of course, as it is possible to make your own gel plate with gelatine (so I have heard!) although this always seemed like far too much effort for me, I like things that are INSTANT.

The print above was made following the tutorial on the Gelli Arts blog, and you will see that my print looks very similar to the one on the DVD tutorial.

I had another go with different coloured layers:

And then I threw caution to the wind and did my own thing just to see what I would get, taking inspiration from Dina Wakley, however Dina has mastered the art of looking effortlessly arty, whereas mine looks like a 5 year old could have done it!

But I can't even begin to tell you how much fun this is! I had a great (and very messy) time playing with this and I'm desperate to do more. I have learned something already .... here I used Golden fluid acrylics which are a probably a bit too thin, and too quick-drying for this. You need a bit of time to work on your layers before the paint dries .... I just about got away with it because of the cool climate I live in here in the north of  England, UK. So, perhaps something like Golden Open Acrylics, or maybe add a medium to my fluid acrylics to increase the drying time.

I also learned that it is really useful to have spare paper or card to hand because you need somewhere to roll off excess paint off your brayer and stencils etc, and then you end up with another cool background like this! This is just the mop-up card, how cool is this?

Watch this space for more Gelli adventures and experiments.

Talking of playing ... some of Donna Downey's super-large stamps fell into my shopping basket the other day while I was at Art from the Heart and as luck would have it I stumbled across a background I had made previously in my ledger journal which I had totally forgot about. Don't you just love it when that happens?! Obviously as I had new stamps I had to stamp them STRAIGHT AWAY, so I tried them out on my ready-made background. This is a double page spread measuring 12" by 18" so you can tell just  how big these stamps are.

Poppy and stem by Donna Downey

Ink sprays (Vibrant Turquoise, Fresh Lime) and stencils by Dylusions

A bit of gesso and liquid pearls, and a quote from an old book:

A close-up of the background using the gorgeous Dylusions ink sprays. I love the way that you can layer light colour over dark colours with these inks ... there isn't many things that you can do that with.

Right, I'm off to have a major tidy-up in my craft room so I may be gone for some time LOL! Byeee