Gel Printing Plate Tutorial

Hey Friends !

I've had this Gel Printing Plate by Gelli Arts

for awhile now but haven't had the time to try it out. 

Boy, my mistake, because

this thing is wonderful and fun to use.

I see this becoming my "go to" supply

for ATC backgrounds, card accent paper

and mixed media collage.

Supplies: brayer, acrylic paint, baby wipes

foil, plastic wrap, acrylic glaze to thin paint ( if needed),

various tools and items to make marks with.

This is a 6" square gel plate

 Squirt about a quarter size amount of paint. It's better

to start out with too little paint and add more. Your

paint will spread easily across the gel.

 Use a plastic fork to make designs, or the

opposite end of a paint brush. Do not press hard

as you can damage the gel.

 Lay paper across the top and press down lightly.

Gently lift off being careful not to slide the paper around

to blur design.

A little hard to see with the white paint. Sorry about that.

I used a paint chip card that I had punched squares out

for this imprint. Then I took a paintbrush end and

drew some squares free hand.

Then I rolled some white paint on top of the gel and

took paint off in circles with a paint brush.

You do not have to wipe the previous paint off if you don't

want to. I left the little bit of pink on  here.

Love all that detail and layers!

You can use crumpled up foil to lift paint off.

 It leaves a wonderful lacy design.

Plastic wrap works great as well.

First layer was rolled with 2 colors of blue

(just a small drop of the dark blue).

Paint lifted with the foil and paper pressed onto plate.

Second layer was just a touch of green rolled

on the edge of the gel plate, lifted with foil

and printed on top of blue.

More samples of prints:

Blotted around edge with tissue.

Printed on sheet music.

Some block prints on a "test canvas".

I flipped the gel and placed it on the canvas.

Remember to write backwards if you add text. :)

The row of hearts was done by just rolling a

strip of paint onto gel plate and then drawing hearts.

On this one you can see that you can get

2 prints off of the gel plate, which is nice if

you want your edges to be less sharp

and more of the background to show through.

Wash your gel plate off in the sink with water and mild soap.

It cleans up well with baby wipes, too.

I had a ton of fun playing with this and now

have a nice stash of background papers to boot.

Cathy Calamas - Paper Traders