Powder Prints

This frosty leaf was my favorite find on my walk this morning....it has a bit of a swirl! 

And what's not to love about this beauty. 

Before I start sharing my Playful Pages journal, I thought I would backtrack a little and share more about the process of gelli printing with paint and baby powder. When I'm working with the gelli plate it's hard to take photos because I work fairly quickly...and I get so absorbed that I just forget. But I'm going to try and explain how I made these three prints.

I'll start by saying that I got the idea of using powder from two artists I admire. It's much easier to see the process in their Instagram videos than in my photos. 

Here's a post by Drew Steinbrecher. 

I was also very inspired by this post by Brigit Koopsen. Now I want to do more with multiple colors. 

I rolled a thin layer of paint on the plate...it was a mixture of blues and greens.

I sprinkled baby powder OVER the paint....and it will act as a resist.

If you use the powder on the first print...you will get white spaces in the print. If you don't want the white spaces...start with a sheet already painted.

This is the first print...and you can see that there is still quite a bit of paint on the plate....and the powder is mostly there too. It looks like that's powder on the print...and some of it is...but some of it is also the white paper showing. You can brush off the the excess power on the print with your hand or a damp cloth...or just leave it. 

I always used a "junk sheet" to quickly pull up extra paint on the plate after a print. I use the same sheet over and over and it often gets interesting. 

I thought the first print was a little dark and...and I wanted to soften it and create even more texture. 

So I applied another layer of paint to the plate...this time a lighter blue and green with a little white mixed in. I sprinkled more powder...and printed over the SAME print. It lighted it up...and doubled the texture...even after I brushed off the powder. 

I used the same junk sheet to try and get more wet paint off the plate. 

This is what the plate looked like after the two prints. There is still powder residue...AND remember there is paint trapped UNDER the powder. 

I spread a thin layer of white paint over the whole plate and pressed a clean sheet of paper onto the plate and let it sit there for about a minute. That fresh paint helps clean the plate and pull up most of the paint. 

These clean the plate pick up prints are always some of my favorites....you never know what you're going to get. And I particularly like this one. 

The white paint mixes with the bits of color still on the plate to create a dreamy background. That dark blue was trapped under the powder....now it's back on top. So much scrumptious texture!  

And here's my clean up junk sheet that I used in between prints to remove any remaining wet paint. 

To fill it in a bit....I put just a drop of aqua paint on the plate with a spritz of water. I smeared it around with my brayer creating almost the consistency of watercolor. You don't need much! 

Then I took one last print with the junk sheet. The watered down paint fills in the white spaces and gives me a usable print...or the base for another print. Layer...layer...layer.