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

When Is A Card...

... not a card. Well, when it starts out as a card and turns into something else. 

I fancied a little gell plate session. So I grabbed my plate, some paint, stencils and some heavy weight smoothy card. 

This was my first page, it started black with some stencilling..

Next I added pale green, then some pink and finally blue.. forgot to take more photos. 

This was from the 2nd sheet, first blue..

then orange.. more stencilling, and then yellow, again I forgot to take photos of each stage. 

These are the pulls that I made, the pink one is actually some of the yellow one with added pink. I can never quite decide whether i think gelli printing is worth all the effort, it took ages just for 2 sheets. I could have painted more than that in half the time. 

I used my new butterfly stencil PS029 to outline a butterfly on one of the prints. 

and PS030 to make the lollipop flowers onto the pink sheet. 

I used PS031 and some Stewart Gill paint to create an edge on my card blank. 

I then added my darker print to the centre. 

and added the other bits plus a title. 

I liked it, but somehow it just didnt seem finished.  Because I had used heavy cardstock, and few layers of paint, the front of the card was now quite  weighty. To balance that out I brayered on a little paint onto the back of the card. 

This made it feel better, but still I felt it needed more. then it hit me, it really was more like a book cover now than a card... so why not add pages. 

I rifled though by bit bag and pulled out some previously painted left over papers and cut them to size. Some are just paint, some stencilled, some marbled. 

I stitched them intothe cover..

and voila! a 6x6 travel size mixed media journal.. love it!

Darcy x

Homemade Gelli plate.

I have had a 'proper' gelli plate for a while now, probably 18months. I think I have used it 3times, I love the idea of it, I just can't get terribly excited about using it... I have no idea why. Maybe I just need to be inspired by the right person. i do love the pieces made by Andy Skinner, he has a very arty approach rather than a crafting approach. I also really like the way Barbara Gray  uses her gelli plate. She has more of a crafting approach, but her end results are quite arty... besides which she is funny. 

Then I started seeing people making their own gelli plates, wow I wish I had seen them before I got the real one...I love making tools, trying to save money where possible, but mostly because I get satisfaction from creating rather than buying...  

So I decided to make one, for no other reason really than I wanted to try it. My real one is 8x10 inches, so I knew I wanted to make a different size. I thought that one big enough to use with tags would be a cool size, and easy to transport to demos. 

I used the recipe from Pam Thorburns blog, I have researched many recipes and blogs and they are all pretty much the same. many use american weights/volumes. As Pam is in the Uk and had worked out the uk equivalents I just followed her recipe. 

Now I only wanted a small tag sized plate, and I knew the amount in the recipe was going to give me a bigger plate.... no matter, I will make a big one, cut it in half and give half to a friend. 

I was going to use plastic storage boxes as the molds, but eventually settled on using this biscuit tin as it had a completely smooth base. 

I mixed up the ingredients, and poured.. and got lots of bubbles. Very disheartening. So I chopped it all up and remelted it in the microwave, this time I poured it slowly through a sieve... much better, but still not as good as I wanted. So again I remelted the gelli and poured again. This time i got a nice smooth surface. 

It was pretty much set in 4hrs, but I left it overnight before using it. As you can see I have cut the plate in half. Each plate now measures approx 11cm by 22cm, which is the size of a large tag. 

I am keeping the plates in these plastic boxes, very handy as they are perfect size and have lids.. I paid 99p for each box. 

I trimmed the plates so that they are just smaller than the boxes, just enough to get a finger under the corner to help lift them out. 

As you can see they are the right size for all my tags. 

So, now I have done the bit I was interested in .. I guess I had better use one of them.. 

I layered up some PaperArtsy Fresco paints, and this is the page that I pulled. As you can see, I used 2 masks in the process to give me a couple of unpainted areas. I wasn't aiming at anything in particular, just trying it out. But I did like the resulting colours. 

It is always a good thing to have spare paper next to you, to clean off your brayer. so after I pulled my main print, I was left with this scrap piece and also the 2 mask bits.. 

I cut my main print in half, and now I had all these usable pieces. 

I could have stopped right here, put them away in a box or drawer. I cannot tell you how many videos I have watched, seeing people pull prints, use scrap paper and then do nothing with them. Don't get me wrong, I am as guilty of hoarding as much as the next crafter, but I do believe gelli print hoarding is a whole other phenomena. There are drawers the world over full to bursting with painty papers..

Not me... at least not this time. I decided to use them straight away. 

I emptied out a bag 'o' bits.. 

and I made cards.. 5 of them. All from one pulled print, the masks and the scrap paper. 

Make something with your prints people, I want to be inspired!

Darcy x