My newest challenge has been in the printing arena and I'm finding that I love it. If you have been following my blog you know that I have experimented with the media of printing in the past and have cut my own stamps. My newest interest has been in the area of gel printing and have been following a small company called Gelli Arts www.gelliarts.com for some time now. I've watched when grow from a start up company to a company that seems to have developed a nice following and is certainly taking the world of gel printing by storm. I recently took the plunge and purchased one of their gel plates so I could try this fascinating media and have been having a great time. So far I've thrown out more pieces than I've kept but isn't that part of experiencing a new media and I'm finally ready to share some of what I've done with the plate.
I've tried many of the techniques that Joan shares on the Gelli Arts Blog and was the very happy winner of one of their give aways this past week and am looking forward to receiving my Princeton Art Catalyst Wedges so I can continue this wonderful new media that I am exploring and I want to thank them for that opportunity.
I think that if you are a Decorative Painter who is saying, "ok this is cool, but it isn't something that I can wrap my head around to use," I think that if you try this you will see that it has so many applications for the Decorative Painting world and I'm working on a new project that will incorporate the printing plate. Ok, don't worry I will also include the painting instructions in case you aren't quite as enthralled with this new media as I am. LOL.
If you do the research and are interested in the plates you can purchase the plates, brayer, and Princeton Arts Catalyst Wedges from Dick Blick which is where I purchased mine. I like one stop shopping and was able to do that through Dick Blick, I recently became a partner with Dick Blick in their affiliate program and you can access the company through my links page on my website. http://www.chartmandesigns.com/store/WSshowlinks.asp This link will take you directly to the Dick Blick website. Google Dick Blick to see if they have any coupons that you can use, they often have unannounced specials in addition to their usual sale flyers. I was able to save 15% off of my order and that helped pay shipping costs.
This is my first attempt at the wipe out technique that is currently on the Gelli Arts Blog. It was very fun, but because I didn't have the tools that Joan has I had to use other household items to smear my paint around and I had mixed results. I can't wait to try it once I get the wedge tools. You can see that in the bottom left photo I started by adding texture with bubble wrap as my first layer and went on to use the wipe out technique. I used my Deco Art paint and in the two samples on the right used glitter paints in addition to my Americana paints. That worked well and I always print a ghost print which is recommended by Joan on her blog and the print below is the result.
The sample that you see above was completed by pressing bubble wrap into my paint, lifting that off and pressing a sunburst texture plate into my paint color and printing that. Next I added orange to my plate and printed using one of those fantastic stencils that I was blogging about earlier this month and printed the orange dots. This is actually a ghost print because I had too much paint on my plate and my first print didn't turn out well but I liked the ghost print.
What are your thoughts? Will you try this technique? Stay tuned for further posts showing other samples.
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