Destination Inspiration – Gelli Distress

Hi everyone and welcome to our Destination Inspiration post where we provide you with a variety of ‘articles’ to inspire, motivate, provoke your thinking and enrich your creative experiences or, as in my case today, show you experiments to see what can be created with just a short ‘play time’ (well I think it was about two and a half hours). 

A few weeks ago I taught a beginners class making mono prints by using the gelli plate. We had great fun using acrylic paints and using a variety of tools and mark making supplies to see what we could create. The morning ended with us trying out what we had learned with distress inks. So this gave me the idea to have another session at home and show you my experiments.

Here’s my starting point.

I collected together everything I thought I would need (but still had to pop off and get other bits during the session – but I guess that’s because our brains will go off in different directions).

Trying to keep things fairly simple I thought I would keep to a routine of media on gelli plate and here we have got weathered wood, rusty hinge and dried marigold distress inks (DI), dabbed on directly using the ink pads and then rollered over.

Press in something to create texture (and remember don’t use anything sharp as it will leave a lasting impression on your plate that you won’t be able to get rid of).

Place paper/substrate over (I used cheap copy paper for these experiments) and I rubbed with my hands to take the first generation mono print.

I always roller off the inks/paints etc. onto another piece of paper and used these in the printing process.

So we have achieved a simple print.

Next I added textured ribbons, DIY dry wall tape and punchinella on the inked plate and placed a sheet of paper over all of it and rubbed …..

…. but what it produced was far to regimented for me and not what I was looking for.

However for the next print (when I had removed all the ribbons etc.) I used the previous mono print to add another layer to it and I began to see possibilities.

I played with other things to create texture like crumpled paper …….

……. and bottle tops with peacock feathers and shabby shutters distress inks. You can see the potential for great journal pages here.

I started to play with masks pulling a print over the top of the mask (using one of the new ones that has not long been released)  ….

…… then the mono print after the mask had revealed what was underneath and I began to envisage these with DIs blended through other masks over the top.

This is the latticework mask used with tumbled glass and pumice stone – again the print taken over the mask ….

…. and mask removed.

I learned a lesson here, I kept the mask up the right way only to find the numbers ended up the wrong way when I had finished.

So I had to do it again and flipped the mask over  (I am lucky to have two of the ruler masks, I had bought one last year and then got given one on the Tim Holtz retailer training I did last year – so lucky).

This was printed over a rollered piece of paper.

I also dallied awhile playing with distress stains, but they proved to be too watery really.

Back to distress inks -

I rollered the background with distress inks, placed the mask over and then added some walnut stain distress stain through the honeycomb and pulled a print.

Before I removed the mask I dabbed walnut stain DI pad over the honeycomb and took another print, this time I used walnut stain and rusty hinge together.

Now I removed the mask and laid over the rollered off paper …..

…. and finally I placed the inky mask over a previous experiment so you have two layers of masks showing.

I decided to have a play with distress paints too, I had been playing for a while, not wiping the paint off between prints and decided to just roller antique linen over the plate which still had lots of bits of colour on (sorry no photo, got carried away with what I was doing) -

Here the print was pulled through the mask and the greeny colours have been pulled from previous layers ….

and here the mask was removed and the mono print taken which pulled some greens and rusty hinge DPs.

One last painty print where I had been playing with the splatter mask and used rusty hinge DP, I just rollered the back of the inky mask onto paper and for the second layered print I used broken china and evergreen bough DPs with the cargo, honeycomb and bubble masks imprinted into it.

When I thought I had finished for the day I found I had three rollered backgrounds I could use so I grabbed the latticework mask -

Here the background is evergreen bough and antique linen rollered off then mowed lawn and pine needles distress ink pads pressed over the mask -

There was still enough ink left on the gelli plate so I laid another piece of paper over and got a much lighter second generation print over an iced spruce background.

Lastly I pressed the same green pads over once again and laid a piece of spare paper that had been rollered off and had stamping over it too. You see I just can’t stop can I?????

Some of these pieces I like just as they are but others I can see being used with blended inks and masks. Next time I am going to go directly onto card so I can die cut my tags and create immediate backgrounds.

I am still something of a beginner myself to the gelli plate but I had great fun, I hope I have inspired you to play with the distress products and see what you can create too.

Thanks for reading right through to the end.

hugs {brenda} x0x