Printing with Gelli Arts®: October 2015

Thursday, October 22, 2015

NEW! Gelli® Mini Printing Plate Sets!

Excitement levels are off the charts here at Gelli Arts®! We're bursting with inspiration for stamping with our NEW Mini Printing Plates! Watch this video and see how AWESOME the Mini geometric plates are!!

The Gelli® Mini printing plates are available in two different sets. One set includes a square, a circle and a triangle. The other set has a rectangle, an oval, and a hexagon. Each Mini plate fits within a 3" area. Versatile shapes — so FUN to use!

These basic geometric shapes are the building blocks of endless great designs! What CAN'T you do with the Gelli® Mini plates?!!! Simply put one on an acrylic block and stamp your heart out — on whatever you're working on!

Don't have an acrylic block? A sheet of acrylic or any smooth plastic piece will do. The lid of a CD case works just fine.

Creating designs with these amazing little monoprinting plates is just like printing with any Gelli® plate. Stencils, combs, and found textures all work great!

The Crafter's Workshop 'Bits', 'Fragments', and 'Remnants' lines of stencils and masks are sized right for printing with the Mini Gelli plates! And so perfect if you want to create small layered images like these.

When it comes to adding accents to an art journal or a planner page—stamping with these fun Mini plate shapes creates such artful impressions! Each stamped Mini image is unique— a true monotype!

The Mini plates are so addicting—I get totally carried away! So much for adding just an 'accent' to this 'To Do' page! :)

When you start stamping with Mini plates it's hard to stop! Especially using shapes that 'fit' together to create an all-over pattern. Start stamping triangles and hexagons and you'll see what I mean!

This print was stamped on a piece of Strathmore Bristol, which was first trimmed to 8.5"x11. After the print was dry, I cut it in half and used an Arc punch to make holes along the margin. So the pages fit right into my disk-bound planner. Now I can look at those pages all the time! If I want to work further on the prints, they're easy to pop out and stick back in. How nice!

Those of us who love layers in our artwork will welcome the creative effects you can get using these small printing plates. Is there an easier way to create a focal point on a larger piece? I'm even adding stamped Mini plate images to the art journal pages I use to clean off the excess paint from my brayer, palette knife and texture tools while Gelli® printing.

Simply put, I'm having a BLAST stamping with each of the new Mini plate shapes!

All of the artwork shown here and in the video was printed using a variety of DecoArt Acrylic paints, including their Media acrylics, Americana Acrylics, Americana Multi-Surface Satin, and Dazzling Metallics. I'm so pleased with the results I get from all of these paints. And they're great for stamping with the new Gelli® Mini plates. A small drop of paint is about all it takes.

Mini Printing Plates are made of the same gel material as all of the other sizes of Gelli plates! So you KNOW they're an amazing and unique printing experience! Try them and see what all the excitement is about!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!!!!

Winner: Judy Irene Harney!

Our terrific giveaway features BOTH sets of the NEW MINI Printing Plate shapes… and MORE!!!

One lucky winner will receive our prize kit including:

1 - Gelli Arts Mini Printing Plate Set - Circle, Square, Triangle shapes

1 - Gelli Arts Mini Printing Plate Set - Rectangle, Oval, Hexagon shapes

4 - DecoArt Americana Multi-Surface Satin Acrylics - 2 fl. oz. each

4 - DecoArt Americana Acrylics - 2 fl.oz. each

4 - DecoArt Dazzling Metallics Acrylics - 2 fl. oz. each

1 - Speedball 4" Soft Rubber Pop-in Brayer

To enter the giveaway, click on the red "ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE" button below! (This will ensure that we can contact the winner and that entries are limited to one per person. One winner will be selected from all the entries via a random number generator to receive this very special giveaway!) Entries will be accepted until Monday, October 26th at 12pm EST. Our lucky winner will be contacted by email and announced here on the blog and on our Facebook page no later than Tuesday, October 27th at 12pm EST!

ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE !

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!!!!

Remember, we now have Gelli® partners all over the world, so it's easier than ever to find a Gelli® retailer near you!

Good Luck and Happy 'Mini' Printing!

Materials Used in Today's Blog:

Minis - Oval,
Rectangle, Hexagon

Minis - Round,
Square, Triangle

Acrylic
Stamp Mount

DecoArt
Media Acrylics

DecoArt
Americana Acrylics

DecoArt Americana
Multi-Surface Satin Acrylics

DecoArt
Dazzling Metallics

Laura Murray
Rubbing Plates

Catalyst Contours
Mini Combs

4" Pop-In Soft
Rubber Brayer

The Crafter's
Workshop Stencils

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Gelli® Prints: Planner Pages!

The planner bandwagon has been circling for quite some time — and I'm finally ready to jump on! It's past time to put some effort into organizing my calendar, to-do lists, project ideas, and so on. Where to start? There's a world of planners out there! My number one priority: I want lots of my pages to be Gelli® prints :)

It's the ultimate mash-up! A customized planner filled with Gelli® printed pages! A hybrid planner/art journal. The best of both worlds. That's how I envision it.

I also want to be able to rearrange the pages and add more as I go — including different types and weights of papers, in a variety of sizes. A totally flexible approach. To be able to take a page out, work on it further, then put it back — in a book that opens totally flat!

Good news! I found the perfect system at my local Staples — 'M by Staples' Arc System Project Planner...customizable notebooks.

The Arc system's binding is made of individual plastic disks that fit into specially punched pages. The pages lift out and press back in — so you can easily add or rearrange pages. Different types of covers (in several sizes) are available. There's even a clear cover so you can showcase your Gelli® print as the cover art! Larger disks can be purchased to accommodate more pages, and smaller disks for fewer pages. It comes with lined pages, but different types of pages and accessories are available. You can truly design your own system.

What I like best is that you can buy the punch — making it possible to convert any paper into an Arc compatible one. It's not inexpensive, but it's well worth the cost if you want to customize your planner and include your own printed papers.

There's a smaller, light-weight punch — available at a lower cost — that's mobile and easy to pack.

If you want more info, check out the Arc system at Staples. I'm here to show you how cool it is to use with Gelli® prints!!

If you print on copy paper or card stock (8.5" X11"), you'll find that cutting the print down the center will give you two pages (8.5"x5.5") — perfectly sized for the Arc planner! And if your original print was created on an 8"x10" Gelli® plate, you probably have blank margins on three sides of each cut page.

The blank margin space creates a great opportunity to embellish the pages. Washi tape, rubber stamps, collaged ephemera, doodling, and painting are all potential ways to take advantage of this space.

Or create Gelli® prints intentionally for use in your planner — and if desired you can eliminate the margins when you print. Print overlapping layers to cover the entire paper. And of course, you can always cut down a print so that you get one planner page from a piece of copy paper. Let your printed image tell you how to use it.

Most of my prints are created on one side of the paper, leaving the back blank. That means I can use the other side for any purpose, such as calendar/diary entries, journaling, favorite quotes, collage and drawings. I also use these pages as a sketchbook to capture ideas and inspiration for new pieces of art.

Another option is to create a Gelli® print on the back side. Easily done! If a one-sided print is already in your book, simply pull it out, print on the back and reinsert it into the planner. Being able to take pages in and out is an extremely convenient feature!

I'm crazy for this system! So now I'm going through my stash of prints looking for pieces to 'Arc'. Sometimes a section of a print is all I want to capture and save in my book. Not a problem! Just trim the print, then punch it and stick it in. Or glue it to the back of a page. Another option is to create pockets on prints to slip papers into. More fun!!!

There's an obsessive, addictive aspect to working in this type of planner. It's an ideal 'catch-all' for scraps of paper, bits of ephemera, photos — and endless opportunities for incorporating washi tape, rubber stamping, stickers, doodling, and drawing on your Gelli® pages!

Here's another fun thing I've discovered: Flipping through assorted Gelli®-printed pages serves as a great reminder of the various techniques that were used to create them. Recalling a technique you want to explore further is a perfect way to jump-start your next printing session! There's much inspiration to be found among a compilation of prints. I can't wait to do more "thick &thin" prints, and "painterly layers"! With so many different Gelli® techniques to work with, it's easy to lose track of some of them — and GREAT to revisit them!

Now, off to schedule some Gelli® printing time on my calendar! I need more pages!!!

Are you using a planner? If you do, are your Gelli® prints in it? We'd love to hear if you're into planners, so please leave a comment and tell us about it!

Have Fun and Happy Printing!

Materials Used in Today's Blog: