playing with my gelli plate

I always have great plans at half term - catching up on schoolwork, catching up on housework, planning out new ideas for the classroom, decorating in the house, clearing out, gardening (getting those spring bulbs in)....

In reality I actually just needed a really good rest and after sleeping a lot and catching up with friends I made myself play with my paints and gelli plate on Friday morning - play is rest too, and is VeRy good for you!

The colours this autumn have been amazing.  I've done a lot of driving through the Cheshire countryside this week, being Mum's taxi for my son who was doing some work experience with a farrier - the drive has been a real treat to just soak in the amazing colours of the leaves.

So I took the leaves and autumn colours for inspiration as I played.

I brayered Dina Wakley's acrylic paints onto the gelli plate, pressed down some stencils then laid down a leaf before taking the print.  These just shout out for some zen doodling inside the leaf shape!

Removing the leaf and taking a second print is actually my favourite result though :)

I had a bit of play with other colourways too.  I love black and white backgrounds with added colour so look forward to adapting this piece.  The paints used are  'night' combined with 'umber'.

Some of the leaves are still green 

which makes a nice combo with oranges, yellows and browns.

I then chose to play with my little 3" x 5" gelli plate, exploring the use of dark blue

trying out new colourways such as yellow ochre and grey

and layering colours into my little journal, ready for some imagery

By the end of all this playing, I had a fantastic sheet of paper created by cleaning off my brayer in addition to the many sheets of gelli printed papers :)

Sometimes I find it easy to play but I really had to work at it this time.  It was worth it though :)

Kate Crane - a mini journaling inspiration!

Saturday saw my good friend Chris and I heading up to Art from the Heart, Harrogate to take this class from Kate Crane:

It's aaaaaaaaages since I took a class so I was really excited.  I love little books and have been really keen to get journaling in some, but for some reason I find it really hard.  I can happily journal on small tags, or decorate tiny squares or envelopes, but adding paint to small pages throws me!  I LoVe the colours Kate uses on her pages, well, everything about them to be honest!  They're always STuNNiNG!

I'm usually a baby wipe girl, slapping the paint on my page; Kate had us paint with a paintbrush over gessoed pages.  I HaTe gesso!  And probably for the same reason most people like it - I don't like things to move once I've put the paint down, and I know how paint etc is going to behave on paper, gesso makes it behave differently.  

I do LoVe the pages I made on the day though, and as well as learning a different way of adding the paint to the page I challenged myself to work in a different way.

 It was also great to meet people from blogland,

http://patacake-patcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/08/mini-journalling-at-afth.html

http://gezzybscraftybits.blogspot.com/2011/08/well-i-promised-my-next-post-would-be.html

http://craftyshe.blogspot.com/2011/08/birthday-weekend.html

http://gotpaintinmyhair.blogspot.com/2011/08/fabulous-weekend.html

http://flutterbycrafter.blogspot.com/2011/08/warning-contains-scenes-of-sexual.html#comments

 and not forgetting those without blogs, and to share in Sheila's birthday cake :)  

I've worked on a couple more pages since the workshop - thanks so much for the inspiration, and for a great workshop Kate! I'm getting there I think, although I still don't get the nice, distinct areas of colour like you do ;)

unfinished; meant to try NoT working across a double paged spread in class

and forgot,  so had a go here

no gesso; bit busy this page; little tag book in bottom RH corner

is covering up a picture I added last night and didn't like!