I recently discovered the Gelli Plate by Gelli Arts. Oh. What. Fun. I spent yesterday morning playing with it, (and my kids were all at my elbows trying to help - but can you blame them? It's so FUN!) and I had this great idea. When I was cleaning up my craft room - a never-ending process - I found a Moleskine journal - but it's some kind of special one, a Japanese fold one I think it was called when I bought it months ago? Anyway, only the first page is connected to the hard cover, and then all the rest of them are accordion folded down from that first one, back and forth, back and forth. Every once in a while, you can see a little lip of paper where one sheet is glued to the next sheet, and they just keep folding back and forth. There is a pocket in the back, on the back cover.
Anyway...I thought it might be fun, to try to print the pages of this Moleskine journal with the Gelli plate - it's almost exactly the right size as the 8x10 plate, when opened flat - and make myself an art journal that would be ready to journal in.
I got started and WOW, it was SO fun I didn't want to stop...but I had to...because I had a physical therapy appointment. And it's probably good that I did...because otherwise I probably would have sat there ALL day long and wouldn't have been able to move or walk when I went to get up at the end of the day!
The picture above is my "mop-up" page...the page I used to lift whatever paint was left on the plate after I did my main print. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!!
This page is a "ghost-print," and I am in love with how it turned out!!! After you've done several prints on the Gelli plate, you end up with some built-up "ghost" images, or dry paint on the plate. You *COULD* just spray it with water and wipe it off with a towel - but WHY would you do that?? Instead, from the videos I've watched, everyone recommends using white or off-white (like Titan Buff) paint to lift the paint. Well, I wanted to try something a little different. I had a LOT of this teal color on the plate, and I thought some light gold would look nice with it. So I covered my plate with a mixture of gold and titan buff paint, put my paper down, rubbed, lifted, and this is the beautiful image I got! I tried to get the photos to show the beautiful gold shimmer - I hope you can see it!! Photos really don't do it justice!
Now for the journal pages...I'm truly having a BLAST working on them!!! I can't wait until the entire book is finished! It's going to be SO fun to work in!!!
On this first page, you can see bits of large bubble wrap, lines from a wood-grain texture plate, bits of punchinella here and there, and a mop-up print of several stencils, including a chevron pattern.
Here you can see more of the giant bubble wrap, lots of other textures, and a bit of a ghost print on the top layer.
On this page, the first layer included several small-scale stencils with a mixture of blue and pearl craft paints. The second layer (though it almost looks like the first layer!) used a large-scale stencil with a couple colors of fluid acrylics.
This one started with a stenciled layered of teal-turquoise fluid acrylics. Then there was a partial ghost print, and finally a layer of purple and yellow which I allowed the kids to play in. They used silicon texture brushes by Princeton to smear and mark in the paint on the plate...they had a great time! I think I'm going to have to get a couple more plates just for the kids to play with - or I'll NEVER have mommy-play-time anymore!!
I love how this print turned out. It's one layer of fluid acrylics. I used shelf liner to get the ridges across the top; a foam stamp for the flowers; punchinella for the circles; feathers across the lower right; and I just LOVE how well the stamp of the 3 gentleman in top-hats showed up!!!
Finally - this is the last page I got done yesterday. I used 2" letter stencils and laid them down backwards on the plate so that they would show up properly on the journal page; and I used a circular stencil. The smaller circles were made with a large lego block, and you can see more shelf-liner ridges. I used a bit of magic mesh in a couple places too.
Now, some of these pages may be done, and others may still get additional layers added...that's the fun of the Gelli plate - it is just SO easy and fast and fun to make great backgrounds!!! Oh, and the plate comes in 3 sizes - I have the middle size, 8x10". (And no, I'm not getting paid to say any of this, and no, I didn't get my Gelli plate free or anything! LOL!!)
