Summer Gelli Fun

This video by Joan, over at GelliArts, fascinated me! I had to give it a shot. It explains how to use clear packing tape to pull prints off a GelliArts gel plate and then use Perfect Pearls, tin foil, and gold leaf to color in the backgrounds.

I inked up two plates at a time, following Joan's instructions carefully. She suggests that you use masks to allow for blank spaces on the plate, which I did on two of my plates, and then let that layer of paint dry fully, which I was less patient with. Once the first layer of paint is dry, you use texture tools, stamps, and other mark-making tools to create multiple layers of paint and design. Since Joan's video is so explicit in showing each step, I didn't bother to photograph them for this blog, so I highly recommend going and watching her short tutorial!

The real key to making this technique work is to allow the paint to dry fully before using the packing tape to pull it off the plate! I can't emphasize how important that step is, and in fact, because paint tends to dry slowly on gel plates, I just left mine overnight and then pulled my prints the next morning.

I found some fun texture tools to work with this time, too, in the scrapbooking and children's aisles at Michale's.

A fun, crocheted doily.

A sheet of die-cut paper that I used as a stencil until it fell to pieces.

Some flip-flops from the bargain bin outside that yielded some nice textured stamps...

The red pair were a real bargain, because they had a different texture on both the top and the bottom...

And the black ones had a really cool pattern on the soles...

But the best find of the day were these foam textured sheets.

The package contained two sheets each of six different three-dimensional patterns. Score!

With these new tools, and a set of Sharpie paint markers, I was able to create three different sets of Gelli tape. This plate...

...produced this tape...

This plate...

... gave me these pieces...

And a plate I didn't photograph gave me these lovely strips of tape...

I wasn't able to locate my gold leaf and I kept forgetting to bring foil in from the kitchen, so all I used to color in the blank spaces was my set of Pearl-Ex pigment powders. I found that I liked the brighter colors better than the more muted, pastel colors.

Some of these tapes will be used to create some thank you notes. The rest may go into one of my art journals.

I hope you try this technique, it's a lot of fun and the results are brilliant!

Happy creating!