Gelli Plate Play On Fabric

I took a workshop 'Gelli It Up' at the College of the Rockies College of the Rockies, Creston, BC, Summer Series with Win Dinn http://windinnart.blogspot.ca/ this past weekend. It was an excellent, fun, well organized course which I would highly recommend.

 

The idea of mono-printing so appealed to me, that I put aside my beloved thickened dyes to work with fabric paint on textiles. I did have a lot of fun and below are few of my creations.  

Texture making tools and foam stamps by www.artfoamies.com

 I had the pleasure of trialing  several of these stamps from this excellent, Canadian company. The stamps were well used all weekend by participants of the workshop who were using acrylic paints and they stood up perfectly to frequent washing. I was printing on fabric (mostly) and the other participants were printing on paper  (mostly) and the stamps worked equally well on both.

 

The foam stamps are sturdy, and thick enough that marks are cut into the foam for additional detail. As I like birds, those are the ones I am trialing but this family run company has many more designs so be sure to check out their website. http://www.artfoamies.com/ Also, you can have them create a specific stamp for you. Love that idea! 

 



Texture was created on the gelli plate. Then I removed some paint by pressing a bird stamp into the paint. Next the fabric was laid over top and pressed into the plate thus transferring the design. Neat huh! I am definitely going to try more of this technique.

Using a similar technique as above, creating texture and stamping the egg stamp into the paint. Then I pressed a magazine page onto the gelli plate

After creating the background fabric piece, I over stamped it using the heron stamp. Wouldn't herons look great pink! Note I changed the angle of one of the bird's heads purposely for a little variety. This piece is ready for some free motion stitching don't you think.

Here, I am experimenting with placing Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint on to the Gelli plate using a bayer to create a thin layer, stamping to remove paint and then laying fabric on top to print the image. Also I stamped directly onto the fabric with the stamp. Notice the second ghost print of the dragonfly. I did this by stamping a second time before reloading with paint. Wouldn't these techniques make terrific one of a kind quilt blocks?

Stamping fabric paint onto printed material. Oh I can see some wonderful applications for this technique. We all have printed fabric we maybe aren't in love with anymore. Why not overprint with textile paint using foam stamps to create something we would sew with?

For this print I rolled acrylic black paint and Golden's GAC 900 textile medium onto the Gelli plate. Stamping onto the plate, I removed some of the paint. When I laid the fabric onto the plate, the negative space around the image was transferred. Fun!

My friend gave me this piece of eyelet, leftover from curtain making. Isn't there always a story to these stray pieces of fabric we have in our stashes. I created texture on the fabric by using a stencil on the gelli plate. When the piece was dry I over stamped it using a cadmium red acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. I don't know yet what I am going to do with this piece but it will be something, because I ADORE it. Let me know if you have some suggestions.