Gel Printing

See the little veins of color?

First attempts, and the hemp was not small enough

Clean up print and my favorite

Getting there

Looking like marble

Now we have it!

Printing on top of a marble print

in self defense, I had to get them all up off the floor

I have mentioned before that there are hundreds if not thousands of free tutorials on just about anything to do with art and crafts on YouTube. You can also subscribe to mailing lists, which I do for a select few. One is the Gelli Arts Plate company. A free video was posted this past week by Birgit Koopsen. Holy Moly, folks. If you have a gel plate you really need to try this technique. I warn you, it is messy. As in Jake had hemp pieces stuck to his fur when he walked across the papers on the rug.

The concept is simple: make some background prints in light colors. Mixing 2 or more colors will yield the best results. Set those aside, then take a few pieces of craft hemp. I used cheap stuff from Dollar Tree, 3 in a pack. Pull the strands apart, and I mean really shred them. If you have the strands too thick, the lines on your prints will be too thick as in the double photo above. Mix 2 or more darker colors on the gel plate, place the thin pieces of hemp around, and print. Make sure to also do a ghost (second) print, because these are usually the best.

You will have hemp on your brayer, plate, the floor, everywhere. So once you start, just go with the flow and keep printing. The more tiny hemp pieces, the cooler the marble effect will be. This process is addictive. I couldn't figure out why the dogs were bugging me yesterday afternoon. I had missed their supper time (3:30), and they are so abused. How could I possibly feed them late???

To view Birgit's video, go to the Gelli Arts blog here. You can also do a search on that blog, or on YouTube for a long, long list of videos by Birgit. I am going to watch them all.

I don't want to go to work this morning. I want to play!!!
Linda