Art Journal Every Day: Gelli Printed Journals

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  There is a flickr group for sharing right here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it.  If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post.  Thanks!

One of the women on the Coney Island sketch group showed off her sketchbooks.  I went ga-ga for them.  They were amazing -- colorful and whimsical and fabulous.  But she said they were all done on location using just a black marker!  I asked her if she had pre-painted her pages with acrylic paint.  She said the pages were Gelli Printed!  Well, that got my brain whirring!

I went home and grabbed two small Canson journals (similar to this one or this one -- couldn't find the ones I actually used) I had sitting around and started the printing process.

Why two journals?

Gelli Printing is done with acrylic paint.  It's a wet process.  If I was just using one journal I'd have so much waiting time -- even with a heat gun.  You can't move to a different page in the journal until the first one is dried.  Further, the best prints are done in layers.  That's a lot of drying time.  As it was, I still had a lot of drying time.  Next time I might go for four journals at a time.

In any case, here's a photo I posted on instagram when I was done.

A couple of people asked me if I printed directly into the book or bound printed pages.  I printed directly in the book!  The trick to getting a clean print across the crack is pressure.  If you're not getting enough pressure by pushing the book onto the plate, consider lifting up the plate and pressing it down onto the book (like a giant stamp).

Here's a peek at some of the pages I printed:

I used a variety of household objects and handmade stamps to make the prints, along with my Indian Leaves and Dash Circle Dash stencils.

As you can see from the prints above, on some pages the print made it across the journal seam seamlessly.  In other places, not so much.

But does it really matter that you can see some of the layer underneath in the seam?  I don't think so!

I did my first sketch in one of the journals.

I couldn't resist the lure of the white pen. 

I look forward to creating more sketches in these Gelli Printed journals!!

Have you Gelli Printed directly in your journal before?

Here's this week's linky list:

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for stopping by!