Jam Up and Gelli Tight

How long has it been since you fell in love? 

I am up to my paint-crusted elbows in love with my Gelli plate. 

Last week I spent vacation time on the lake with my other love, Mister Man, who managed to read books, take naps, and eat delicious food while I compulsively rolled paint onto the plate before I fell face forward from exhaustion.  Thank goodness for that brayer that developed a squeak after about the second swipe.  It is all that kept me awake.

"This is my last print," I must have announced at least a thousand times.   That's what happens when you are in love.  You just can't get enough.

Now that we are back home and reality has set in, I am not making gelli prints like the obsessed fool that I was.  I am now trying to figure out what the heck I am going to do with this goregeous stack of paper.

This one I did a mixed media piece on canvas but naturally I forgot to photograph it before I started.  I cut the bird out of a index card that I printed and used some rub ons to complete the painting.

Well, there you are until next week when we find out if the spark still holds!  And I come up with some more finished products.

Hugs, Diana

Who hit Nellie in the Belly with a Gelli Plate?

Ok, my title may be a little ridiculous but my Gelli Plate isn't.  If you don't know, a Gelli plate is a mono printing plate that allows you to create works of art with blank paper, some cheap acrylic paint, a brayer and something to make marks in the wet paint like a stencil or a stamp. 

The secret that they don’t tell you in Gelli Plate Land is that once you go there you may not be able to do any work, feed your family or walk the dog until you make just a few more prints.  It’s that addicting.

I’m not going to explain about the process because there are tons of videos on YouTube and at the Gelli Plate blog http://gelliarts.blogspot.com/    I am writing this sleep deprived because I stayed up late playing way past my bedtime.  And since I am on a working vacation, I could have been outside enjoying this view:

But why enjoy nature when you can get paint on your hands?

Here is the already used and well-loved gelli plate, gifted to me from my friend who is vacationing with me.  We took turns fumbling our way through the process which was lots of fun when one of us got to be the consultant and the other one got to make the prints.  (What that really means is we took turns bossing each other around!)

A side benefit of making prints is that while you are doing that you can clean your brayer on some scrap paper, old book pages or in my case, rewrites of my novel.  You get to use this on future projects like art journaling or other mixed media adventures.

Here are a few 8 x 10 prints I made.

I have about a million index cards that were going to be thrown away at a business next door to where I used to work and I pack-ratted them.  They have writing on one side but that just adds another layer to the mixed media look of the print.  

Here are way too many samples of my binge printing.

Now my challenge is to figure out what to do with all this artistic loot! Hopefully I will have something to share next time.

Have a creative week!

Hugs, Diana