Gel Plates and Nature Printing

Last week for Demo, Wendy was the demonstrator!! She showed her take on Gel Plates and Nature Printing!!

Just LOOK at how fantastic these designs are!!  

Gel Plates:

What is a Gel Plate? Gel Plates are a soft bit of acrylic.. it is like a squishy, clear block... and it feels a bit like hard gelatin! 

To use a Gel Plate: 

Take some Acrylic Paint and squirt a *tiny bit* onto your Gel Plate. Use a Brayer to roll out a thin coat of paint across the Gel Plate. Use Stencils, textured ribbon, leaves, feathers, etc, to make impressions and designs into the Gel Plate! Then take a piece of card stock and press down onto the Gel Plate, use the Brayer on the backside of the card stock so the paper picks up the entire image. This process is called "Mono-printing" (roughly translated, it means a "single print") 

Here, Wendy rolled on gold, purple, and copper Acrylic Paint and then laid down some dried foliage and finally rolled on some Black Acrylic Paint at the end. She removed the leaves and did a mono-print!

Wendy took the leaves from the above Gel Plate and placed them down and did another mono-print of just the leaves... I love how you can see how intricate the leaves are!! 

It's fascinating how different the outline of the leaf looks vs. when a mono-print is done with the leaves included.. you get way more detail when you print the leaves after they have Acrylic Paint on them! 

Ok, now for Nature Prints!!! 

Wendy has explored the world of Nature Printing for awhile now... and you can too if you have a Home Die-cut Machine!! 

Organize your Big Shot die-cut Machine with the following layers: Base Plate (with all the flaps folded back), a piece of scrap paper to catch ink, a CLEAN cutting plate (no cuts in it) with Versafine Clair inks pressed onto it, a few foliage pieces (or feathers, flowers, etc), a piece of white card stock to print on, another piece of scrap paper, and your final cutting plate. 

When you roll the above layers through your die-cut machine, you can get some AMAZING PRINTS!! 

Check these out.. Wendy did the same technique as above, though this time when she put Versafine Clair inks on the CLEAN cutting plate, she also used some stamps to make impressions in the ink (look for the swirl images below) and THEN she laid down feathers!! 

LOOK HOW STUNNING THESE ARE!!! 

The Nature Printing technique is SO MUCH FUN because not only do you get this impression of natural images, but you also get THE TEXTURE!! Literally, the paper is textured like the foliage or feather you chose.. you can even feel the veining on the card stock!! 

There are SO MANY options for doing Nature Prints! What exciting combo can you come up with? Ferns and green inks? Maybe dried flower prints in pink and orange inks? THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!! 

Stop by to see AND FEEL these samples.. you will want to explore this idea further.. Such amazing ideas, Wendy!!