I love to make my own printed paper to use in my mixed media art. It is a way to control the color and pattern to make it uniquely my own. Also, I feel that the pieces integrate into my art better than the commercially printed papers. There is nothing wrong with using commercially printed paper and I have occasionally done so but for my art, I prefer the look of the painted papers.
Having said that, I set out to make some painted pages...with my Gelli Printing Plate and magazine pages. The first thing that I did was to select the magazine pages that I would use for this process. I selected pages that had interesting colors or patterns. The subject matter didn't make a difference as it wouldn't be recognized once the paint layers were applied.
For this project, I used magazine pages from Oprah and National Geographic magazines, Liquitex soft bodied acrylic paint, Amsterdam and Master's Choice acrylic paints and various stencils. I prefer the artists acrylic paints to the craft paints because they stay wet a little longer and some of the artist paints are transparent or semi-transparent giving you additional color and dimension when layering.
The process that I used was to apply one or two colors of acrylic paint, using a brayer, and then making an impression in the paint by rolling and lifting the stencil over the Gelli plate. I then randomly applied the paint to the magazine page paying particular attention to the parts of the magazine print that I wanted to cover or leave exposed.
Here are just a few of the Gelli prints that I made from magazine pages.
Now, don't you feel like grabbing your Gelli Printing Plate, a few magazine pages, paint, brayer, a collection of stencils......and having some fun????
Until next time!
Hugs!!!
Ginny