Gel Plate Monoprinting

A few weeks ago I lucked out and won a GelliArts gel plate from online friend Judi Hurwitt. Yesterday, I finally got around to playing with my gel plate. These plates seem to be the latest craze too, as I have seen other friends and bloggers playing with them as well. I think GelliArts is on to something.

Here is a stack of fabrics that I created using many different forms of surface design, ranging from monoprinting, stenciling, spraying, screen printing, stamping, rolling, and doodling.  

This first piece of cloth is my wipe up or wipe off cloth. I lay this out next to where I'm working and use it for cleaning off my roller, brushes, stamps, stencils, etc. Sometimes I find that I like these pieces of fabric the best.

This fabric was mostly sprayed on. I placed a large stencil and then spritzed color from a spray bottle on. There is one area at the top left where I did a monoprint.

These next two pieces are spritzed on color through stencils and then I screen printed and doodled with black paint.

Same thing on this next piece but no screen printing, just doodling.

I like this next one. You can see some purple and orange monoprints with my gel plate and then lots of stamping and stenciling.

This grouping is monoprinting and more stamping and stenciling.

Spritzed on color through stencils for this next one.

And these next photos are my favorites. These were all done with the GelliArts gel plate.  

For these, I spread black paint on my gel plate, very thin, and then I placed a piece of fabric or paper on and with the blunt end of a paintbrush, I drew a design on the backside of the fabric or paper.  The last photo is a paper print negative after I removed the fabric from the plate. I think this may be my favorite way to use the gel plate.

The gel plate I am working with is 6" x 6". There is a larger one made, 8" x 10". This is such a great product.  If you are into surface design, whether it's on fabric or paper or both, this is a wonderful toy to play with.