Gelli Printing Tutorial with Stencils

Lindsey (doodlings_cards) with a tutorial for a Gelli printing session using Rubber Dance stencils Big Triangles and Dotted 1 and acrylic paints. If you’ve not tried it yet, I wholeheartedly recommend it!

Rubber Dance stencils are great quality – a lovely thickness so paint doesn’t seep underneath, but still not too rigid – and they are larger than most so they can be used on a larger plate or a square 6″ plate without leaving a margin.

Most people have their own “go-to” colours and are instinctively drawn to certain colour combinations. When I’m settling down for a printing session, I usually stick to analogous colours (those that sit next to each other on the colour wheel). Firstly, because I’m impatient, and don’t like to wait for my paint to dry 😂 and secondly because it yields me a large number of prints that all mix and match colour-wise. If I used complementary colours whilst still wet, the paints would mix and I’d get a muddy brown mixture!

I wanted “warm” cheerful coloured prints, so reached for a range of pink-orange-yellow acrylic paints.

The first pull will be clean and crisp. Thereafter it gets wonderfully interesting with paint left on the plate, that adds to the layers and grunginess of subsequent print pulls 😊

One tip is to clean your brayer / wipe off the excess paint on a separate piece of paper to give you perfectly co-ordinated coloured paper with texture from the brayer “rollings”.

Mix and match with a different stencil & slightly differing paint colours 😁

Change of colour – as you can see, I often like to add paint in a patchy, mottled way! All adds to the texture.

You can also use the Gelli plate as a paint palette to add interest to the prints with stamps as well as using stamps to remove paint from the plate, to give a textured print pull. Here I used images from Pencil Marks 7.

If I have a very “busy” background, I often use it to stamp on and then cut out focal images for future projects. I find it’s best to use either permanent archival ink or heat emboss the images (a lot of inks take forever to dry on top of acrylic paint backgrounds).

I also like to pair up patterned prints with calmer plain prints and then adhere them together to make backgrounds for future crafting sessions.

Here’s some close ups from my printing session.

I do hope I’ve inspired you to play with a Gelli plate and acrylics – it’s so much fun, and rather addictive. You’ll be rewarded with a large pile of wonderful prints to use for future projects 😁

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Lindsey x

Instagram @doodlings_cards

Products from Rubber Dance: