Compare Notes

It's always interesting to me how long I anticipate and plan for a trip or an event....then it comes and goes in a flash. It felt like I was gone a long time...but it's already behind me and I'm easing back into my everyday routine. 

After I wrote this post....I realized how confusing it all sounds. So if you aren't interested in gelli printing...I suggest you just move on with your day. But it's more interesting than my unpacking...laundry...and other chores of the day.  

When I was at Becky's we spent a little time playing with her small gelli plate. I showed her a few of my favorite techniques using a tight color palette so the papers would coordinate.

We made a big mess...but we had a good time.

Not every print is great...but there are pieces and parts that are wonderful...and there's lots of ways they can be used.

Here we taped the paper down to the table then took a print of some grasses from her yard. 

We carefully lifted the paper so we could remove the grasses...then put the paper back down pulling the ghost print of the grasses to fill in the negative space.

Here we used my favorite technique of letting the ghost print completely dry.

Then we rolled on fresh white paint and pulled up the print. The white paint blended with the bits of paint on the gelli plate to create a pretty light blue background.

There is so much detail in the ghost print...and this method is the best way to pick it all up.

This next photo is probably the first print from the above photo that created the ghost print. 

We started with a light aqua background and pulled the print of the fern using dark blue paint. The first pull is gives more of a stark outline of the fern...the wonderful details were captured underneath from the imprint/ghostprint of the fern. 

We wanted to soften the print a bit so used a stencil to add some dots.

When we pulled up the stencil we were left with this ghost print of the paint trapped underneath. 

  We let it dry completely on the gel plate.

Then we rolled a couple of darker colors over the dried ghost print and picked it all up.  

We liked the bubble effect...and it's much prettier in person.

Here we did the same thing with another stencil...and it kind of happened by accident. We had a pretty imprint from this stencil on the plate...too dry to pick up.  So we let it dry even more and picked it up with a layer of white paint.

We both think the ghost prints are often more interesting than the initial print of a leaf or a stencil....they have so much more texture.

If we had more time...we might have played around with these papers a bit and created a few collages. But hopefully Becky will play around with hers...and I'll play around with mine...and we can compare notes.