Gelli Print Journal

OK, so you invested in a Gelli Plate and had hours of fun making your own prints - but what do you do with the hundreds of monoprints you created? You can, of course, use them as collage material in your projects, but that still leaves you with loads of prints lying around. And some of them, let's admit it, are just too good to cut into pieces!

I contemplated this dilemma following my recent rampage with my Gelli Plate. I think the idea of turning them into a journal came about when I selected some of my favourite prints for safekeeping. I was holding a stack of them in my hands and as I was leafing through them, I thought: wouldn't it be nice to bind them into a journal?  But how? I wish I could give you precise step-by-step instructions on how to do this, but the truth is I bodged it. Yes, I'm not ashamed to admit it.

If you want to know how to bodge it, please read on - otherwise skip straight to the photos! I first cut the excess white margins off the gelli prints, except on one of the shorts sides, which was going to be the spine. Next, I glued two pages together back to back, making sure that the white margins on the short sides lined up. I used 24 gelli prints to make 12 pages. Then I cut two pieces of cardboard (out of recycled Amazon packaging) to make the covers, which I covered with Gelli prints front and back on both sides.

The next bit is tricky and this is where your bodging ability comes in handy. You have to glue the white margins of the Gelli prints together so that the sheets roughly line up with each other and then add the covers in a way that allows you to open the journal flat. This is not easy, but it can be done. I used an extra piece of cardboard to make a spine and glued it to the front and back covers. Then I glued the stack of Gelli Prints to the back cover along the white strip that I left as a margin. I hid the joints of the cover and the spine behind some washi tape.  Let it dry overnight, otherwise it will just fall apart, but make sure that the pages can be turned and lie flat when open. I hope one of these days I'll come up with a better solution. Perhaps stitching would be better, but for now the glue holds quite well.

Once you've got your journal bound, you can stamp, paint, doodle and journal on your prints. I find it very satisfying that I can carry my journal around as it is very tactile. What I love about this project, is that it's all mine: my own background, my own stamps (except the alphabet), my own doodles - nothing is shop bought other than the paints and pens, of course. I'm halfway through filling up the journal, experimenting with patterns and doodles. I work on it whenever I get a chance, just a few minutes each day.  It's great for trying out your new home-made stamps!

Have a look at some of my pages below.  I've doodled so much that I used up all the ink in my Uni Posca pens, so I had to get some new ones! Doodling is such a fun activity and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone suffering from stress, anxiety or even depression. It is very calming and therapeutic. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Front cover with washi tape along the spine

You can see that the binding is  a bit crude

Inside of the front cover

The pages lie flat

On the left is a "virgin" gelli print, the right hand one has been doodled on.

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Shine - a canvas project for the Kraafters Kommunity 12345 Challenge

This is the first challenge I've ever taken part in. Yay! This challenge was originated by the Kraafters Kommunity on Google+.  It's a lovely crafting community growing by the day - make sure to check them out!

The challenge rules were very simple. Your project had to include the following:

1 of something - for me it's the canvas
2 dimensional items - I used foam and twine
3 papers - I chose book paper, printed tissue paper and handmade watercolour paper
4 colours - I used Liquitex Basics acrylics: cadmium yellow deep hue, cadmium orange hue, quinacridone magenta and metallic copper
5 letters - I chose the word SHINE

Simple as this challenge may sound - I did struggle to come up with a concept at the beginning. Once I chose my word, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do, but I found it very difficult to get started.  There was that "big" white canvas staring at me. I say "big" because it's the biggest I've ever done, but at 12" X 9" it's hardly gigantic.

When I chose my colours, I made sure that they would mix well together. I new I wanted something bright and cheerful. My word SHINE suggested yellows and oranges and I chose the magenta simply because I love it and it harmonises well with the other two. The metallic copper was to be an accent colour that I used for stamping.  When I got over my initial block, I took a deep breath and just started smudging the paint on the canvas, straight out of the tube with my fingers. And I absolutely loved it! What was the big deal? This actually turned out to be the easy part. Within just 5 minutes I created a colourful background that I instantly fell in love with.

The rest of the project turned out to be very much a "labour of love" with a lot of toing and froing between ideas, false starts and, yes, waste of materials. But it was all worth it in the end! The terms of the challenge made the project a bit more difficult for me to complete, but it also made me think outside the box and consider using materials that I wouldn't have used otherwise.

Once the background was dry, I decided to use my homemade foam stamps to lay down some random accents with the metallic copper paint. Looking back, I may have cornered myself here in terms of the composition. At one point,  I decided to turn the background stamping into doodles, which, in turn, very much restricted my possibilities. Perhaps it would have been better to think about the composition first. Then again, too much thinking takes the fun and spontaneity out of the equation. Luckily, it all worked out in the end, though at one point I was so stuck that I even considered abandoning the project altogether and start afresh.

Here are some photos of the process and end result. I hope you like it!

Canvas with Liquitex acrylics - I originally envisaged a landscape design 

I added metallic copper paint with foam stamps

I added black and white doodling over the stamp marks

The finished project

The sun is supposed to be the focal point of the design

I stamped the letters on painted and torn book paper and outlined with a white marker

I used foam as one of my dimensional items (it was originally white but was easy to paint with the acrylics)

I used printed tissue paper for the background

The twine was painted the same yellow colour as the other elements

I added bits of twine to the middle of my stamped doodles for texture

My First (mini) Canvas

I don't know why, but I find creating on a canvas more than a little intimidating. Perhaps because it is a bit more permanent than a piece of paper. A piece of paper you can scrunch up and throw away, which is not so easy to do with a sturdy canvas. So I feel pressured to create something lasting and worthy of displaying on the wall. This pressure sometimes disables my creativity completely.

Luckily, I already had a small, flat canvas board ruined with a failed attempt at acrylic painting a few months ago (before I became interested in mixed media) which I have only just found lying at the bottom of my stash. Since it was already destined for the bin, I had nothing to lose, so I gave myself free reign to ruin it all over again if I wanted to. Yay!

I started by covering up the canvas with torn pieces of three different gelli prints. Then I cut random circles out of book pages and stuck them down with gel medium. When it was dry I gessoed over the circles just using my fingers and outlined the circles with a black pen. I also doodled around the circles of my gelli prints with a white pen. At this point I was stuck. I kind of liked the look but I didn't know how to proceed. Then I remembered that I had some rubber postage stamps lying around somewhere, approximately the same size as my circles. Bingo, that worked quite well! I still had a small problem with the focal point.

Having made no plans at all, I had no idea what the title or the focal point of my creation would be. I knew the focal point should be the largest circle but I wasn't sure what to put in it. I rummaged through my stash and I've found a sheet of printed tissue paper by DoCrafts and I really liked the image of the dragonfly, so I pasted it in the circle. The good thing about tissue paper is that it becomes transparent, allowing the background to show through. Another option would have been to do an image transfer, but I was too eager to move on and I didn't have the patience to experiment with an image transfer. The title 'Mail Art' came with the set of stamps and I used it in lack of a better idea, but I still quite like how it looks in the overall composition.

I'm thinking of doing a few more similar canvas designs and when I have five or so I can hang them one below the other, connected with a ribbon(?), for wall decoration. For now I'll just "admire" my first creation and gather the courage and inspiration to make some more!

By the way, the canvas used in this project originally came from the Works. It measures 5" X 7". A pack of 6 only costs £1.99. I think that's a really good deal at 33p per canvas. I must buy some more next time I go. The Works also sells these in bulk: 12X6= 72 canvas boards for just £16.99.  That's less than 24p per canvas! I find that unbelievably good value!

Canvas board 

Close up of canvas board - oops, it looks like I clipped the dragonfly's wings! Oh, well.

Playing with my Gelli Plate

Inspired by the arty folks over at the Google+ communities, I've dusted off my Gelli Plate and got down to work making some monoprints. I've pretty much used up all my acrylic paints - but, hey, that's what they are for, aren't they? When printing with the Gelli Plate, I would recommend using the cheapest paints you can get, so you don't have to worry about wasting it. The Reeves acrylics are excellent for this, or if you live near a Works store in the UK pop in for an acrylic starter set, which includes 18 brilliant colours in generous 36ml tubes for just £7.99. This is what I used for my prints and I will definitely buy them again. They're really good value and work well with the Gelli plate.

I've created about 100 new prints the other day. I even used some of the ones I had created a while ago and added a few more layers to them. Some of the results are better than others, but that's the fun part about the Gelli plate - you never know what you get in the end. I used various texturing tools (bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, diecut shapes and stencils and pieces of textured wall paper, which you can get as free samples from most DIY shops (I got mine from Wilkos). I just used ordinary printer paper to pull the prints.

Here's the result of my hard labour (I did get a bit of a backache by the end of the day, but it was well worth it)! I'm sharing some of my best prints as digital downloads. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page for the direct download links from my Google Drive account. They are A4 size 300 dpi print quality jpeg files. You can either print them or use them in your digital designs. If you have a photo editing software, you can also change the colour by playing with the hue slider (Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation in Photoshop).

Loads of Gelli prints!

Gelli prints for digital download

File Download from my Google Drive (22MB zip file): Download

Derwent Watersoluble Metallic Pencils X 12

I've just bought a box of 12 Derwent metallic pencils. I couldn't find much information about these on the Internet, so I thought I'd write a review. These exact same pencils are also available in packs of 6, one pack containing the traditional metallic range (silver, pewter, gold, antique gold, copper and bronze) and the other the coloured ones (yellow, red, purple, pink, green and blue).

If you check the ratings on the traditional range on Amazon, you'll see that they are very poor and I understand why. First of all, these pencils are not really metallic. They may come in 'metallic' colours, but they lack the sheen of true metallic pencils. Secondly, four of the colours (gold, antique gold, copper and bronze) are virtually identical. Some of these pencils are also quite hard and it takes considerable effort to transfer them onto the paper, and once water is applied there's not much pigment left behind.

The saving grace for the larger set are the six coloured variants, though these are not very metallic either (if at all, to be honest). However, they are strongly pigmented and dissolve well with water, retaining the vivid hues. Compared to the other six pencils, they are almost like a completely different product. Indeed, they more than a little remind me of Derwent's Inktense pencils. Another thing I like about the 12-set Derwent metallic pencils is the tin. It looks really nice and shiny and definitely has the wow factor for me.

Take a look at the results of my experiments below. The first column shows the pencils applied and burnished. This gives them a bit more metallic sheen, but not much. The second column shows how the pencils dissolve when water is added (dark wash). The third column shows the amount of pigment picked up by the brush in the second column (light wash).

UPDATE: 26 July 2014>>>>> Having obtained some black paper today, I've had a chance to test these pencils on a dark background as well. I must say, they perform much better and look more metallic, especially the traditional set. However, they lose most of their shine and strength when water is applied, so I would recommend using them dry. I've added a photo showing the Derwent metallic pencils on a dark background below. They would be really good for drawing peacock feathers! So, I'm glad to report that I haven't wasted my money after all.

Black and white doodle cards

I had a few sheets of watercolour paper lying around that I had sprayed with Dylusions inks a few weeks ago for testing.  I wasn't sure what to do with them, until inspiration hit me this morning. I cut them into small cards, slightly larger than ATC size, and stamped some flower images on them in black archival ink. I used Rangers Jet Black ink pad, but there are lots of other similar products that would be just as good. I outlined the stamped images with a white Uniball gel pen and added some text and borders as well. You can use letter stamps instead of hand lettering if you prefer. I like how the black and white designs stand out against the coloured background. These cards are super easy to make and I find doodling very calming and therapeutic.

A word of caution about the Dylusions inks though: you may find that some of them fade rather quickly when exposed to sunlight. I left a sheet of paper originally sprayed bright pink in the conservatory about 4 weeks ago and it has gone completely pale! Therefore, be careful not to use these inks on projects exposed to bright sunlight - it would be a shame to see your hard work disappear in front of your eyes within just a few weeks. They should be safe inside your journals though, I assume.

Orange flower on blue background (and a lesson in Creative Freedom!)

This orange and blue design was never meant to be a piece of art, especially not one to share on the internet. I was just fooling around with my gelli plate one day, trying to print with die-cut shapes on rough, handmade watercolour paper. I wanted to see how the acrylic paint would transfer onto the rough surface. I used the ugliest brown paint I had, just so I wouldn't waste my "pretty" colours. The results were uninspiring and I tossed the piece of  paper on the scrapheap. I only just found it the other day and I started wondering what this paper would look like with my Winsor & Newton watercolours.

So I sat out in the garden and just started painting over the unsightly brown print without giving it much thought. There wasn't any pressure to create anything spectacular - after all, this was just a piece of scrap paper and I was only experimenting. There was nothing to risk, nothing to ruin. It is amazing how much creative freedom this belief gave me. I have two expensive journals (a Moleskine and a Strathmore) that I'm too afraid to use in case I ruin them.  But when I work with "scrap" all my inhibitions disappear and I feel so liberated. For that reason, I decided that I will be working on single sheets for a while, until I gain more artistic confidence to start a journal.

In this particular piece I'm sharing with you, I used cadmium red and cadmium yellow for the flower, which coordinated with the brown print already on the paper, and ultramarine blue tinged with viridian green and burnt sienna. I chose burnt sienna because the brown acrylics from the earlier print already "contaminated" my background and I thought another brownish colour would counterbalance it. To my surprise, it came out looking really good, sort of rusty in places, and so burnt sienna has become my new best friend!

I completed the layout with white outlines and doodling on the flower and white dots for a border. I also used Ranger Liquid Pearls for some dotted accents. I really like this design because it will always remind me that I can have as much creative freedom as I allow myself. Instead of trying to create a stunning page in my journal, I will just experiment with scrap pieces of paper (or fabric, or whatever medium) and have fun along the way.

I used a piece of Khadi handmade paper

I accented the outlines of the brown print with a white gel pen

I used a white gel pen for doodling and liquid pearls for accents

I love how the burnt sienna randomly mixed with the blue gave the background a rusty look.