Mother's Day Gelli Prints - Stamping and Printing Sunday

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and to the fathers out there who have to fill in a mother's shoes. 

I wanted to send you flowers so here are a couple of gelli printed flowers. I don't know whether I will leave them as is or whether I will choose to fill them in. 

 My family had our meal out yesterday and so today was a lovely day for sleeping in. Just what I wanted! 

I hadn't gelli printed in a few weeks and I was eager to do some. Here are some of my favorites from today. 

I love the prints as they are, as part of my art journaling, and also as a layer in my double exposure photos. I love the way they combine with other photos. 

I hope you had a lovely Mother's Day. It was great for me to celebrate yesterday (less crowd in the restaurant) and have today to loll about. If you could plan your own Mother's Day event, what would be most meaningful to you? Now that you've thought about it, how about asking for it?

Recycling - Stamping and Printing Sunday

Pinterest is such a wonderful tool for learning new techniques. Using the styrofoam packing from the grocery store to create stamps is just one of the brilliant ideas that can be found through Pinterest. Fortunately or unfortunately, the grocery store I usually frequent doesn't use that kind of packaging much. So I only get to try this method out when I'm shopping off the beaten path. This week held just such an opportunity! The above photo shows the stamps I made. 

Stamping on top of gelli prints.

I'm in love with this one!

 This stamp makes me think of washi tape. The gears are already turning as I think of new ways to use it. 

The original cherry blossom prints were a little disappointing. Adding this new stamp ramped it up for me. 

Instead of rolling the paint on with a brayer I tried using a brush to add the paint and then using the brayer to roll over it to get a better pull. As you can see in the print above there are dangers in this method. As the brayer hit the surface it slid, creating a blob. I developed the habit of laying the foam down, gently adding pressure with my thumb and rolling across one section at a time. There are still mistakes, but fewer of them. 

 This one is particularly striking to me as the original paper had left me cold. I start to see possibilities in it. 

How to do you handle a piece that didn't come out as planned? Do you move on or do you fiddle with it? Hope you have some happy surprises today. 

Sand instead of Stamping and Printing this Sunday

Sundays is the day I've been posting my stamping and printing lately. Today I threw it all over and went to the beach. I certainly left my mark there, however. 

We made flower and sea drift mandalas on the beach. Inspired by photos I've seen of the mandalas others have made, I decided to give it a go. The process unfolded naturally, the tiny cherry blossoms were laying on the sidewalk just begging to be included. Each layer was lovely to behold, but more items beaconed. The final row of shells seemed just right.

It's funny how the creative process is like a road that leads itself. If only I could step out of my own way more often.

This week my creative focus has been on photography. It's natural to happen while taking a class. I'll leave you with one more double exposure from the beach. 

Double Exposure - Stamping and Printing Sunday

I'm doing something a little different this Sunday. On a whim I signed up for an online photography course with Vivienne McMaster. She is very inspirational in her writing and is an encouraging and cheerful guide. Having taken her classes, I can say my eye for photography has grown exponentially, my photos have improved, but more importantly Vivienne has helped me to see myself in a different way. I would highly recommend her courses. 

(Do you recognize the stamp I made out of a vegetable tray transposed over a picture of me at work?)

The course I signed up for starts tomorrow. It's called Double Exposure. You can guess what we are going to do. In preparing for the class I started trying out her recommended tools. I melded my gelli prints with other photos and the results blew me away. So today I am sharing my prints in a different way. I love the whole process. I'll be posting more this week as I take the course. 

(Can you see my daughter walking through the paint smudge portal she found in the park?)

(My daughter and our rabbit, Fern, running through a field of gelli print….This is getting a little Alice and Wonderland-ish….)

Shabby Chick - Stamping and Printing Sunday

Before I started Art Journaling and Gelli Printing my style would probably best be described as Shabby Chic or Boho Chic. I love pastels, lace and roses. White on white on white textiles make me swoon. 

So I have a sort of style dilemma - a sort of mid-style crisis. 

For my Stamping and Printing Sunday, I thought I'd see if I could make some shabby chic style prints. What followed was a lot of frustration, some wild vibrant prints (not pictured) and a few shabby chic worthy pieces.  

Here's what it looked like with my first pull. If you can't see anything or can barely see it, that's about right. 

The difficulty is the lack of contrast. Using white on white paper and adding pale pink didn't provide enough of it. So I went a bit more extreme. I did end up with a few pieces that I thought are quite usable. I also decided to be ok with my split design personality. I'm kind of a shabby chick. Soft and vibrant. That's a contrast right there. 

Do you have a cohesive style or do you like opposing styles? Have you gone through this questioning process? If you have, how did you resolve it?  

Jelly Beans and Gelli Prints - Stamping and Printing Sunday

Happy Easter from our Fern. As you can see he hid the eggs right where he could find them. 

Doesn't the color of the eggs look lovely? So I thought, why dye eggs this year when I can dye something else? 

While I had my share of jelly beans today, even more sweet was the results I got gelli printing. I am working on adding layers for depth of visual interest. Hope you agree that these prints look great with their added layers. 

And just this one from scratch. Love the color combination. 

Join me in stamping and printing next Sunday. 

Stamp and Print Sunday

Join me in my Stamp and Printing Sunday.

I read about making stamps using the plastic trays used for packing food in the grocery store. I bought a tray of precut mixed vegetables that was just right for a dish I was making. So I experimented with making stamps. I love the layers of color on them after use. 

Some years ago I participate in a night of community art at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. Participants carved stamps and contributed to a group mural. After a day of snow I longed for spring. The outcome was a cherry blossom stamp. I used it in a subtractive way on these prints. 

I actually love the one on the far left….it's not clear, but I love the feeling. I wonder how it will look after an encounter with some markers….

I had thought I was going to stick with pink today, but I lost to aqua and green. I love these prints. 



Here's the stamp again. The first pull is on the right and the second is left. It's crazy how I often like the ghost pulls better than the original. Either way I feel the start of something wonderful. 

These are both prints that I have posted before. This time they have a third layer of paint! I love them both. The one on the left took my breath away! I had no idea it was going to look this way.  

I close with a glimpse of my excess paint blotter. Just can't wait to see where this takes me. 

Hope your week is full of surprise inspiration!