Growing In Unity - Day Five

Here it is...the last day. *sniff* I saved the big bang for the last day. Several months ago Sandra asked me to do a gelli plate tutorial. I didn't have time then, but then thought it would be a great tutorial for this week, so here you go!

I've had my plates for a few years. I have an 8x10 and the 12x14, which is great for making scrapbook paper. My favorite paper to print on is deli paper. I find mine at Costco like place that caters to the food industry (see what I did there?), but is open to the public. I love the texture it gives and the translucency. The colors never look dull and flat, like I feel cardstock can make them. I love using heavy bodied paint, but you can use all sorts of paint, even distress inks and alcohol inks. Today I am focusing on just one technique, even though there are dozens of things you can do with your plate. I'll be using my 8x10 and deli paper; pulling heavy bodied paint and using stencils.

I have this fun flower stencil (technically it's a mask) that make cute prints.

Apply blops (that's the technical term) of paint onto the gelli. I like to start with my light colors and add the dark later. I've just not had great luck with light over dark.

Gently roll paint onto gelli with a brayer. You don't want to over mix or you lose the color differential, aka mud.

You can see the orange as well as the pink and we're ready for our first pull! Exciting, I know!

Lay whatever paper you're using on top of paint and smooth out, capturing all the paint area.

This is the paint I had after my first pull, so I grabbed another piece of deli paper and repeated the above steps.

Next I laid down my stencil (mask) and applied the darker colors over top, using the "adding paint to gelli and brayering" step from earlier. I took my ghost print and did a soft pull, kinda forgetting that I'm really using a mask, not a stencil, but whatever. I like that you never really know what you're going to get when you play with your paint. I removed the stencil and pulled with my first pull, then still had more paint on my gelli, so I grabbed another piece of deli paper and pulled again!

So for my one process, I got three pieces of cool, one of a kind, patterned paper to use later on projects.

My problem is, I can never stop at just one design so I made these too, using a box stencil. I like how different they look even thought I added paint just once and the different ghost prints look totally different.

I used Circle Scalloped for this card. *note how the circle is placed on a stem and leave set to look like a flower*. I decided that it would be fun to use the paint I used on the print for the circle so I added it to my stamp with my brayer. Just clean your stamp well afterwards.

I did a little paper piecing with one of my box ghost prints.

These clouds are from Sunny Happy Skies. I stamped them on the deli paper, then cut out. I made a sky using a couple of blue distress inks, added my ballon, a sentiment from Sending Up Something Beautiful, and some of the Ariel sequin mix.

If you can, get your hands on a gelli plate; they are so fun to make cool backgrounds and patterned paper with!

I hope you've enjoyed my week here with you, I certainly have, even if I'm simply talking to the wall and a few thousand Russian hacker bots. Be sure to comment to be in the running for everyone's favorite deeply etched red rubber; except the Russian hacker bots, no stamps for you!