Gelli Plates

UPDATE, these gelli plates are now 8 months old. They have not gone mouldy or brittle and they work just fine. A couple have scratches in them not though that just adds to the texture of the prints. i could remelt them and reset them then they would be like new. I may do that at some point. 

Over on the PaperArtsy blog this past two weeks we have seen lots of inspiration using gelli plates to do mono printing. I do have a large (real) Gelli plate, but I fancied playing with some smaller ones, especially the small shaped ones. 

When I looked into buying some I found they were just too expensive for me, so I had a play at making some. 

There are many recipes online, I modified the amounts used for this session to achieve an amount of gel that would be just enough for the shapes I wanted. 

First I sourced my moulds, these are lids from tins and boxes,  mostly metal or plastic. The heart is only cardboard,(it was a chocolate box) to be able to use this I had to coat the inside with some matte medium. 

In a bowl I poured 1 and 1/2 cups of glycerin, to this I added 6 tablespoons of powdered gelatin , allowed it to soften a little and then gave it a good mix. 

I then added 1 and 1/2 cups of boiling hot water. 

The water will sit on the surface to begin with, you have to mix it really well, but not whisk.. you do not want lot of bubbles. i mixed a little bit and then let it stand a minute or so while I got on with making dinner, then I mixed again and let stand again. Each time the gelatin sinks a little so you keep going back to it and mixing some more. 

You have plenty of time, this does not set immediately, and remember the water is boiling hot, it will stay hot for a while. 

I think i went back to it and mixed maybe 5-6 times.. as I said i was making dinner, so it was no problem to keep mixing it as i went past. 

Pretty soon it was all well blended and time to pour. 

I filled my moulds and left them to set, this takes about 4hrs. Though you are better to leave them overnight if you can. 

The tiny circle tore badly as I released it, I had thought it might, it was shallow and very small. But that was ok. I popped that gelli into the microwave with some other leftover gelli and melted it for 30seconds. I then poured it into another lid. 

I used the small square and circle lids twice, I let the first lot set, released them and then poured more gelli back into them. I had my leftover gelli in a jug, it set in the jug but was easy to remelt when I needed it. 

So here are one of the circles and one of the squares. I made a paper template from baking parchment and used this and a large sharp kitchen knife to make the straight cuts. 

Voila! here are my shaped gelli plates, along with the heart. 

Measurements: 

Heart is 7cm wide x 5.5cm tall (dip to bottom point)

Triangle 9cm long on each side

Hexagon 8cm across

Here are the other two squares. 

Measurements:

Medium square 12.5cm x 12.5cm 

Small square 9cm x 9cm 

Finally the circle and rectangle. 

Measurements: 

Circle = 9.5cm diameter.. 

Rectangle = 7cm x 10.5cm

This recipe does not need to be kept in the fridge, just lay then somewhere flat and free from dust. I will be keeping mine in a plastic box that has a lid.I have them laid on acetate sheets so they are easy to lift out, with another sheet between the layers. 

Now to have a play with them. I shall make another post once I have some prints. 

Darcy x

Stacking Mixing Dishes

I find regular moulded palettes a trial to use, the wells in them are usually too small and because 6-8 wells are all joined in one palette that makes them too large to hold and awkward to pack. I am talking about this kind of thing.. 

They are usually super cheap, but I just don't like them much. Also a bit of a pain to clean out, again as the little wells are quite small. 

I wanted something with bigger wells, but not bigger overall, something that was easy to take with me to demos. I saw someone using little porcelain dishes and thought these would be perfect. I believe their original use is for ink, rather than paint.. but I liked them.. 

How cute would these be stacked up on a desk, I like the vintage feel of them.

But.. I have never actually seen them anywhere near me for sale, and even if I saw them I doubt if I could afford them, so how could I get something similar for a fraction of the price?

In town we have a general all purpose kind of store,{Wilkinsons} that has these acrylic coasters/feet for sale at just 55p each. In the past I have only ever seen these in brown, they go under the feet of wooden furniture. 

I spotted these clear ones, there were 2 sizes, these are the larger ones and measure 2.5inches across. 

They might work really well I thought, so I bought a few to try. Of course being clear, whatever you have them stood on shows through, making it hard to see the paint colours you have put inside.  So I turned each one over and painted the underside with 2 coats of white paint, followed by 2 thin coats of matte gel to seal them and stop the paint scratching off. 

Now when I turned them the right way they had a white bottom...{ if I had painted white inside the pots that would have come off whenever I cleaned the inside}

Now I can use them for watercolour paints and for acrylics and for inks and they wipe clean. 

They stack up nice and neat, take up hardly any room and they are small enough to slot a couple into my large pencil case to take with me on demos while still giving me a large enough area for paint. Very handy when you don't want to have blobs of paint all over the demo table. 

ok, so they are acrylic and not porcelain, and they don't look as cute, but for 55p each they do a great job as little mixing dishes. I only have tiny hands, and one of these nestles neatly in the palm of my hand making it really comfortable to use. 

if you are a beader, these, or even the smaller ones, would be perfect little sorting dishes for your beads. 

Darcy x

So, my son is home for a while...with a lot of stuff. I do not have a garage or a shed, so my dining room is always full of stuff that has no home, and is now even more full. We looked at the large plastic storage boxes/mini sheds in the DIY shop and decided we had room in the garden for one of those...but how to get it home? the shop is only 5 mins away by car, but they wanted £20 delivery. So yesterday, OH and son and son's friend went off to get it, most of it went in the car, but the back piece wouldn't fit..so this is how it came home...



Son(at back) n friend(at front) walked home, around 15 mins with it on their heads, as you can see it was raining...but not just any old light summer shower, oh no, this was torrential, and they looked like drowned rats when they got here.

Banging and hammering are taking place right now as OH and son put said box thingie together.

Also yesterday i popped up to the quilting shop about half an hour away from us. They have quite a nice selection of fat quarters, and i was able to take in my new dress and shoes (for the wedding I am going to) and find 3 pieces of fabric that coordinate well.

I came home and 4 hours later, had this pretty little bag, all ready to take with me down to London.




The blue fabric has flowers in cream, made up of tiny dots. The cream bow fabric has tiny off white dots on it, and the lining is a dirty pink.....i don't do pretty pink, and it took me ages to find a pink that I could live with lol




I have a tiny scrap of blue and pink left and a bit more of the cream left, so today i shall make a matching coin purse...and then I need to make some sort of bracelet, and then i will be all set...apart from big knickers! i need big knickers to keep all my flabby bits in order. My dress is long and light and floaty and i really don't want my wobbly bits floating around too.

So purse today, maybe bracelet tomorrow, hairdressers on tuesday, packing on weds, a sewing day out with friends on thursday, and friday off to the wedding.....in between all that i still have 14 bags for Moldova to make.

here is tomato watch...i now have 3 bunches on toms on each plant, big ones at the bottom, some small/med toms half way up the plants and just in the past few days i have some tiny ones at the top of each plant. The big ones are rock hard and very heavy, but so far still very green. I am feeding them twice a week, very excited that we might actually get to eat them soon.

Hello Wednesday, here we are again. Well dare I say it but my back is ever so slightly better, or rather I am having more good days than bad with it. Still wearing a support when I go out, and still uncomfortable to sit for a long time,especially in the car but it is better than it was. Yay..go team me! Lol

So peekatures, well firstly here are another 2 cards made with the fabby papers and images on Kirstys new cd, please see previous post for all the details.

The first is using the 'Lemony Sherbert' files and the second is using the 'Jemima Cuppycake' files.








Next we have a set of 3 mini canvasses, decorated at our montly art group. I love how we all do the same thing but they always turn out so different.

Last weekend I made strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, inspired by some on my friend Jean’s blog, but I used a totally different recipe lol I a behind with my 52 cakes, I can see December being a cake a day kind of month lol I have bought ingredients this week to do something with plums and a lime jelly cheesecake….watch this space.



Next, my bookcases, finally finished. They now have the top boxes added and all filled up. I got my geek on and catalogued ALL of our books, well just the ones in the living room. We have lots of half sets of books, so now we have somewhere lovely to keep them I a on the look out for the missing books. On Bank Holiday Monday we went to a second hand shop in Alnwick, a long journey for me of 90 mins, but I was all strapped up and managed to get through the day. The book shop was amazing, huuuuge, and I picked up 15 second hand books. I went armed with a 14 page list printed out after the aforementioned catalogueing!

Finally, 2 posts ago I mentioned the tag swap I was in, well my tags from the other girls have arrived, here they are. All very lovely and lots of techniques going on. Just need to think of a way to disply them now. Ideas on the matter appreciated.

...and of course my desk, very untidy, full of the remnants of cardmaking. There are also a pile of doll making books under there and a protype bag made from 12 x 12 and sticky backed plastic .It needs a really good sort, as does the floor which I won’t be showing you as it really is that bad lol

Have a great day, see you all in cyberspace.x

Sorry for not blogging, I have been soo busy. The living room is almost finished and i have needed to tidy away the tools and ladders and paint pots etc, but the house is very tiny and we have no garage. The attic is the dumping ground and over the past 3-4 years it has become impossible to move in there. So i spent 6 evenings, yes SIX sorting and tidying up there. I sent ian to the tip with 5 black sacks worth, plus other random stuff, then reloaded the car totally full and sent him to the charity shop...that was last week. This week i put 9 clear sacks of cardboard out for the binmen, along with 5 balck bin bags. I took another 3 bags to charity and have another 3 waiting to go. I hasten to add the attic is still full hahahaha...but it is tidy now, so all the tools etc have been put away. i have also sorted a huge cupboard in the bedroom, it was a scary cupboard, everytime i opened the door stuff fell out. As i have been sorting,the craft room has become very messy, stuff was being dumped in there mid-sort, so now that has all been done too....I have come accross lots of old craft stuff, made years ago.

this is a hardanger cushion, made over 10 years ago and never been used. It is now in my bedroom.



I found several cross stitch pictures, finished but unframed, this is just one of them.



When my son was tiny he loved parrots, he saw a tiny advert only an inch big in a magazine for a cushion kit. Well i couldn't get hold of the kit so I had to make the cushion just by copying from the 1 inch advert lol

Do you remember the Jean Greenhow clowns, I made loads of them for kids in the family. Then i designed a couple of my own, this footballer was for my son, done in the local team colours.

I also designed this pilot, he is called Nigel the Navigator. I made him for my stepfather who loves old planes. You can't see in the pic but he has a backpack on with a big white knitted parachute inside lol

Cake making is going well, I am still on course for my 52 cakes

This one is date and walnut.

Battenburg, yes it really is. i used a ton of pink foodcolouring in one of the cakes but when I got them out of the oven they were both the same colour, very bizzare lol i just couldn't figure out where the pink had gone.

mars bar cornflake cakes, always a winner.

I have also built a single bed in the craft room, and 5 bookcase units in the livingroom. Here are the 3 tall units. I am going to get the extension units to take them up to the ceiling.

oh and as a result of sorting and tidying my desk has actually been tidied, first tme it's been like this in goodness knows how long. Won't last, today it will be covered in fabric and doll parts.

Main (nightmare) wallpaper, and feature paper on chimney breast. Click on the pic for a closer look at the wavy lines which just do not match up.

wow it's been ages again, how rubbish am I??

I had another operation, this time it worked really well and I was allowed to stay awake and watch. I have the loveliest surgeon. It was so amazing, a great experience...

I have returned to tap dancing classes after being away from them for 3.5 months, thankfully it hasn't been as hard as I thought it was going to be.

I have only made one sock monsters recently, but I am expecting socks from America which need making into monsters and sending back before Christmas. The one I made is called Pandora,however she lost her memory due to an unfortunate incident with an egg, and now she believes she is called Clarice.

I have made oodles of socks, so far 2.5 pairs for my partner and 2 pairs for myself, aswell as a new pair of gloves...magic gloves that turn into mittens.

I also went to Nottingham to see my wonderful friends Sam and Tom, and my gorgeous godson Ash Lucas.

hmm what else....a little paper tree for my new bedroom.

ah yes the bedroom, I have been working like crazy to get it decorated. New flooring,plastering,wallpapering,painting,more wallpapering,new curtains,new bed,new bedding,new light,new rug,new chest of drawers and new wardrobes.

98% done by me including all the Ikea flatpack building, just call me Bob!

Me and my son at the R.E.M gig.

Pandora.

Socks for me.


More socks for me.

Wedding card I made for my brother, inspired by one on uks.

Fingerless gloves for me, the little shell on the back of them pulls over the finger ends to make them into mittens.

Teeny,tiny purple and black Christmas tree for my bedroom.

These are the wardrobes I built last weekend, just waiting for the sliding door to arrive.

New light.

Me and the Schlukeypie.

Super cuteness.