All posts tagged: Gelli Plate

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 4.

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This season of Get Messy Art Journaling I seem to have hit on a winner as far as my most enjoyable page goes – simple, simple, simple with an extra shake of simple. I like a white background and I like colour but I am not good at layers or explosions of colour. Some people are amazing at both of these things, but through my journals and over time, I have come to realize that I am a simple art journaling soul! This two pages were made using collage components cut from gelli prints of vintage doilies along with some humans from old National Geographic magazines. I don’t often use red but I like it with the black here. If you are interested in learning more about Get Messy, click here. This post contains affiliate links which are at no cost to you my lovely reader. Happy Thursday x

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Nature Week 5.

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I have been busy with my gelli plate this season, I just keep wanting to print flowers!  No bloom is safe when I get my paints out! Some of the pages were printed before I bound this book and some I have printed over collage elements, like the last page shown here where I stuck down the periodic table and butterfly and then printed some flowers on top. Nearly as popular as my gelli plate has been my sumi brush and black sumi ink which I have used to make patterns over pages. I love the depth of the deep black ink when applied with a nice thick sumi brush. I have been enjoying using the Jane Davenport Inkredible inks which smell as good as they look!  I used ‘Limeade’ on the page with the butterfly and gave it a little spray with my water bottle. I am ashamed to say that I have not followed any prompts this season, I have just been jollying along in my journal filling it up a little each …

Printing giant leaves.

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I was walking home from a successful trip to Goodwill last week and I spotted some huge palm fronds in my neighbor’s garden trash.  After checking that was ok with her I came home to get my garden snips and walked back to harvest a couple of pieces. When I got home I left them in water for a couple of days until I had a clear time slot and a clear table.  I gathered some large sheets of paper and some smaller papers including rice paper, corrugated cardboard,  brown kraft paper, ledger paper, book paper from a vintage garden catalogue and of course dry wax paper. I used a combination of gelli plate and adding paint directly to the leaves to print them, both worked well but I wish there was a giant gelli plate!!! See!  Very big leaves!! Once everything had dried, I wanted to make a book or two using my newly printed papers. One book was made with a single sheet of printed paper folded into an accordion.  I glued the backs …

Gelli Plate Leaf Prints.

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While out walking the dog today I saw and snatched some fern leaves which I brought home to use with my gelli plate and the ever faithful Paynes Grey acrylic paint. While I was at it, I popped across the road from my house and snipped some frothy grass which I thought would print well too. I used my large rectangle gelli plate and my small circle to pull prints of the outlines of the leaves as well as prints of the details of the leaves. I always start with a layer of paint then I put down the leaf.  To get the reverse silhouette print I press down the paper and smooth it out as carefully but as firmly as possible to get as much outline as I can. Once the paper is pulled off, I remove the leaf and press down a fresh piece of paper to get the detail print of the leaf left on the plate. If there is enough paint left on the leaf itself I press it onto the …

Get Messy Season of Contrast, Week 3.

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I let this page guide me as I made it and I love how it turned out.  Almost the opposite to last week where I layered and layered, this page has lots of white space left which I like. I started by making some plain gelli plate prints using the colours I had chosen.  I printed blocks of colour on dry wax paper and old book pages.  Once I had my pages I cut out some shapes as neatly as I could and I tore some shapes to contrast. I wove the green and aqua torn strips, both of which were on wax paper to make the grid on the right page above. The aqua circles are torn out and also printed on dry wax paper. The copper and gold shapes are cut with scissors and were printed on the book paper. I like to see the pages close up, the gelli plate gives an interesting print even with one or two colours. Thanks to Get Messy Art Journal and Jules Tea for the inspiration! …

Get Messy Art 101. Week One.

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This season of Get Messy Art Journal is all about getting down to the art basics and building  repertoire of techniques and ideas.  The first week was no disappointment, there were tutorials in painting faces and creating backgrounds and lots of mini prompts and ideas pouring out of the Get Messy community! I put my spin on a background using watercolor and pulled out my trusty gelli plate to add the wishy washy colour to the pages of my sketchbooks and I also printed onto some pages from a vintage typewriting book. Lots of sketchbooks are essential for me because I always end up starting many pages at the same time and they all need to dry before I carry on to the next layer or page. I tried various colour palettes and I love these backgrounds. I added a page to a page and I will continue to layer onto this spread. These pages started with a self portrait painted on the inside of security envelopes using a sumi brush and black sumi ink. …

Weekly Photos 34/52

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1. I have been painting faces with my sumi brush and india ink lots lately, I like this lady. 2. This gaggle of daisies has followed the one from last week. 3-4. My gelli plate has seen lots of action this week too, I liked making these rainbows in non rainbow colours! 5. I spotted these sappy pinecones on the trail. 6. More gelli plate printing, this time I have transferred my painting faces obsession onto the gelli plate. 7. Discarded air fresheners. I don’t like the smell of a new car and certainly would not want a blue tree which smelled like one.  Not sure about Black Ice either to be honest. I hope you had a good week. Happy Monday x

Art Journaling Supplies I Can’t do Without.

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Art supplies might very well be my favorite thing to shop for.  They are always colorful, always useful, no worries that they won’t fit (they always fit somewhere!), always make me happy.  I literally (not really, that would be weird) skip home from the art shop.  Maybe I am skipping in my head though as I think about my new supplies and how I can introduce them to my existing supplies. Some of my essential supplies don’t even come from the art or craft store, they come from estate sales or thrift shops.  I am talking about the paper and even some of the sketchbooks I use. Oftentimes I will print on paper from an old book or music script, or I will use the whole book as a sketchbook. Another paper I adore is dry deli paper which is not from the art store either (I get mine from Amazon).  It is the paper which you pick out your pastries at the supermarket with or that your sandwich might be wrapped in.  I am …

Get Messy Got Messy. Art Journal Pages.

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There are strange forces at work in my world today, everything is just a little bit off.  Everything. It all started off alright, coffee was fine, walking the dog was uneventful, but the podcast I had chosen was tedious and I switched off halfway through.  I didn’t say the world had ended, just a little off. Then I moved onto the things I really wanted to do, I watched today’s Creative Bug daily art journal prompt which was nice and vague so I could do almost anything. I formed  an evil plan for what I was going to do for that. I need to write a Get Messy Art Journal post, which means I have to make some pages and I really should make the pages relevant to the current season of music. I have been enjoying the art prompts this season, but I don’t often add words to my pages, quotes and lyrics don’t do it for me. I know I am weird, but they really don’t.  Sometimes a line in a book or …

Gelli Plate printing with seed pods.

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Sometimes I find printing with my gelli plate very confusing. There I said it.  Like trying to direct something while looking in the mirror, it is just a skill I do not have.  I still love to play with it though, even when I am not sure whether I am going to get a print with negative or positive colour! I really think this is sometimes when I get my best prints, when I am not sure what is going to happen. I have seen some great prints lately using seed pods so I decided to use some dried honesty plant to make some pages of print and colour. Firstly I decide on my colour palette and  in my mind I wanted these prints to be all blues and blue/greens which as you can see I strayed from a little.  This often happens when I get my paints out and start to put them together, some get taken out and some get added. I will sometimes paint a few sample splotches to see what looks …