Gelli Good Fun

Hello everyone, I have some projects to share that are actually part of a brand new TV showing on the Craft Channel, presented by our lovely boss Lesley Wharton. She is going to be one of their regular presenters from now on, which is fabulous news, and will be a regular treat for anyone wanting to learn some great crafting tips and techniques from a very talented lady.

For the gelli plate show, we wanted to create some projects that catered for all abilities, from beginner to advanced, and the first project that is shown is this one.

To create my cards, I made a mask using a piece of acetate, cutting an oval from the centre. This makes a really robust template, much stronger than paper, and the added bonus is that you can see where you are stamping, and it wipes clean for further uses. I was so happy with this idea, and I have developed it further for later projects, as you will see. I'm sure that others have done similar things, but as I do not watch gelli plate tutorials or YouTube demos, etc., I can honestly say, that this was something that I worked out for myself!

I chose a couple of colours of Distress Ink for my background, and loaded up my brayer with the first colour, and rolled it across the middle of the gelli plate. I cleaned off the brayer, by rolling it onto a piece of scrap paper, and loaded up the brayer with the second colour of ink. I then rolled the brayer across either end of the gelli plate, blending the two colours where they met.

I placed the oval mask into the centre of the gelli plate, and then placed a sheet of bubble wrap over the top of the gelli plate, pressing gently. I took the bubble wrap and oval mask away, and placed a sheet of white card over the gelli plate, smoothing over the back of the card, evenly, to ensure that I got a good coverage of ink. I peeled the card away from the plate, and laid it flat on my craft mat, placing the large acetate sheet over the top. Using a black fineline pen, I drew two wobbly borders inside the oval cut out.I chose two co-ordinating images from the Wild Meadow stamp set and using Versafine Olympia Green, I stamped the images onto the background. I removed the acetate sheet, and trimmed the card to size, before adhering to a large card blank.

For my second sample, I repeated the process, but used a scrunched up plastic bag, instead of bubble wrap, to create the background marks. The oval piece of acetate created air bubbles on the cental section, but this looks quite pretty behind the flowers. That's the beauty of gelli plate prints, each one will be different.

I chose to add a faux stitching effect with the fineliner pen on the second sample, I always find this to be very therapeutic!

For my final card, I created another acrylic mask with three apertures. I used two colours of Distress Ink as before to colour the gelli plate, and then added the three circles to the plate. I took the large crackle stamp from the Echoes of Italy stamp plate, and stamped repeatedly across the gelli plate to take away some of the ink. I then removed the circles before taking the print with white card.

I added the piece of acetate, lining up the largest circle first, and stamped a flower from the Autumn Fairy collection using Versafine Ink. I stamped it a couple of times before re-inking, to get a group of flowers. I also spread the flowers up through the circle, heading towards the next circle.

I covered the largest circle with a piece of paper, and lined up the second circle, then stamped the same flower image into the second circle a couple of times. I also added a butterfly from the same stamp set. Finally, I added a sentiment in the smallest circle. I trimmed the card, and added a bit of shading around the edge of the background before adhering it to a white card blank.

Check out the new gelli plate show on the Craft Channel, and look out for Lesley presenting regularly too. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx