Getting my Gelli Girl on with the Umbrella man….

 

Sassy! This turned out as a ‘finished’ (more or less) piece right off the Gelli plate!

I had made a stencil AND a mask from the Umbrella Man Die by Tim Holtz & have used the pieces on numerous Gelli prints. I die cut it using stencil material by The Crafters Workshop. You can by 12x12 sheets of their very material!

 

The word IMAGINE was done using another Tim Holtz Movers & Shapers die, cut out of Co-ordinations cardstock. The cut piece was a little boring and needed some paint anyway, so a perfect use!

 

I also used a piece of punchinella, which is where the fun bubble design on the Umbrella man comes from.

 

I laid the cut stencil onto a mildly clean (ok, there's some residual paint) Gelli plate.

I used my brayer to ink his hat & shoes black, the umbrella red and a bad mix of deep green & blue for the rest of him…

I then covered the stencil with the punchinella & brayered white over the top of the Umbrella man.

 

The cardstock IMAGINE, I laid face down onto the Gelli plate, and then brayered red paint onto the backside, trying to keep the paint inside, where the letters were. You can see the texture of the cardstock surrounding the word.

 

Since the brayer had cool design from the white brayered punchinella, I ran that around the plate slightly to frame the piece.

I removed the stencil & puncinella, then I did laid my clean white cardstock onto the plate & pulled it off.

The color on the right was from a second pressing into Distress Stain I had put on the Gelli plate from another pressing. It just added a little color to the edge.

 

These 2 were done using residual paint & pressings from other inkings.

Mono Printing with the Gelli Plate & Embossing Folders

I JUST LOVE this technique. Now, I’m not saying I made this up (but maybe I did), but I haven’t seen it done elsewhere. Yet. So if you’ve seen this before, let me know. Otherwise, I’m coming up with a cool name for this technique. For now, we’ll just consider it an embossed mono printing technique.

 

So, if you’re like me, when you get a new die or embossing folder, you’ll run cut or emboss SEVERAL pieces with no real purpose other than to try it out. I have folders FULL of these (you’d think I could actually get a completed piece of work done with this stash). I grabbed 2 that had a great design & depth. The Subway Texture fade from Tim Holtz and the other one by Sizzix. I’ll also include the Honeycomb.

I brayered acrylic paints onto my Gelli plate, and laid the pre-embossed (using tan Co-ordinations cardstock) piece into the paint.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the look of this!

I can see doing this, A LOT. The finish from the paint (and I BET the new Distress Paint will work REALLY cool too) gives this a semi glossy finish, and will create a great resist to some additional inking with Distress Inks or Stains. It will also help keep the embossing raised when using additional wet mediums.

 

Above is the Gelli plate, after the embossed piece was pulled. (note to self, place a piece of white cardstock underneath for pictures). Because the Sizzix Texture Fades have such great depth, the text & design pulls so well, making for a great ghost print! I LOVE that the text WILL BE rightside facing in the final print. 

     

TA Da!!! The image on the left is the print, onto white 110# cardstock. The image on the right, shows both the ‘print’ and the original embossed piece from the first press together.

Now there was a lot of paint on my Gelli plate, because I hadn’t done a print prior to putting the embossed piece in. Therefore, there was still quite a bit of paint for the 2nd print. The words are  distinguishable, and there is some white space.

What a great background this makes!!!!

 

Now this time, I had some paint left on my plate from a previous pulling, before I laid the embossed piece onto the Gelli plate.

This is one reason why the cardstock piece on the right of this image, doesn’t have as much paint on it as the Subway piece in the first experiment.

You can see on the left side, the design on the Gelli plate, produced by the embossing folder.

Pretty sweet!

 

This image shows white cardstock pulled off the Gelli plate, transferring the embossed design.

You all are going to L*O*V*E doing this!!!!!!!

 

These tags was done using the Honeycomb Texture Fade.

The white piece in the center was the original embossed cardstock. The tags are the pulled pieces.

See what I mean? VERY COOL backgrounds!!!

Loving the idea? I know I am.

I can’t wait to work with some of the other embossed pieces I have just waiting for me!

 

I have a 6x6 Gelli plate, and am finding this to be a great size to work with for what I do. The paint stays pretty wet for the amount of time I need. While working with the 8x10, which again is a great size, the paint dries up a little quicker. I notice the difference.

Getting my Gelli Girl on!

 

After spending a fun afternoon demoing the Gelli Arts Printing Plate at Artist & Display recently, I felt inspired to experiment through some ideas I had the next day.

One thing I HAVE to do, is finish up a tag for a Snowflake swap. I used the Catalyst tool to scrape paint onto the Gelli plate vs using a brayer.

Next I laid out stencils from Tattered Angels. These stencils are thicker & stiffer than some other brands, so you get some ‘bleed’ underneath. Not problematic, just adds to the look.

 

 

I pulled 2 tags off the plate as first generation prints.

I ran some white acrylic completely over the top of the plate, and pulled 2nd generation prints, which I like better.

  

These are the results showing the differences.

 

This is one of the more ‘finished tags’. Well, finished with the Gelli plate anyway!

With this tag, you can see some of the stenciling from the first generation print above. I just couldn’t let them bee with the white space earlier, and am much happier with this tag.

This experiment was done using a stencil from The Crafters Workshop & Airbrush acrylic paint in magenta & Fluid acrylic, both by Golden.

 

The right side of this shows the first generation print, and the left side is a 2nd generation. I only used 2 colors, and really like the way the paint blended & flowed under the stencil.

I like the way the fluid paint moved around & created some resist with the Gelli plates surface. I don’t have a lot of airbrush paints, but do like the look. These are done on 110# cardstock, but I imagine if done on Mixed Media (Strathmore) or Bristol the ink would move a bit more.

 

The great thing about stencils, is the ability to flip words so the orientation in the final print comes off right!

After making the 1st & 2nd generation prints, there was still plenty of paint to add lettering to several other tags. No paint left behind!

Watch for the next post. I ended up with some pretty unique ( at least in my mind) prints!