A Tangled Gel Print

 

For the past week we have learned about gel printing, different techniques to try, different ways to use your prints. Today let's talk tangling. Tangle Talk. Yep. But first - how did I make this print. 

I started with a 5" x 7" Gel Printing Plate from Gelli Arts and their 4" wide brayer. In this photo you can also see the 6" x 8" acrylic block I purchased at Joggles. Instead of the Nostalgie postcards you see, I used Bristol Illustration paper from Hahnemühle for this project. 

I placed my gel printing plate on the acrylic block to get started. This turns your printing plate into a stamp, which comes in handy when you are printing something that is not easy to place face down on the gelli plate. I began with a layer of brilliant green acrylic paint from Amsterdam. Just a couple drops and rolled out with the brayer.

This is a really lovely stencil I received from Gelli Arts. Stencils act like a mask with printing. Because I had a relatively clean plate when I started, wherever you see the white stencil will be white in my print when I lift it. 

Using a 5" x 7" piece of Hahnemühle Bristol Illustration paper, I placed the paper on top of the stencil, then rubbed with my hand all over the paper's surface. Rub with your palm, with your fingertips, you can use a brayer, just make sure you rub hard enough that the paper will touch the green paint underneath the stencil. Once you are happy you have achieved good contact all over the paper simply lift it away and turn it over. 

Everywhere I rubbed picked up the green paint. Everywhere the stencil touched my printing plate remained white. So to speak. Actually this paper had a light lavender lift already on it - so you see bits of white and lavender under the flowers. More texture and I am all about texture. Now, I could have done many things with this print. I made another a similar print that you saw in my Zetti ZigZag Book last week. You can adhere bits of dictionary pages, scrapbook papers, tickets, any kind of paper ephemera with a bit of gel medium, dry it well and keep printing colors. 

I decided I wanted to tangle up some florals on this piece. Working mostly with patterns found in Life in Tangles, I used a TWSBI Eco fountain pen to draw. Because I used a thin layer of paint I still had a pretty smooth surface on the paper, so it was easy to tangle. Most any pen would have worked fine. Easy and fun to do. I think I will add this piece to my journal to close out 2020. Cause 2020 needs to be done. 

Gelli Arts products can be purchased by clicking here. 

Bristol Illustration paper from Hahnemühle can be found here. 

Life in Tangles can be purchased worldwide on Amazon.