More Gelli Printing coming very soon! and Altered Books too.

The new workshops are booking up fast!

On April 11th I'm repeating the beginners Gelli Printing workshop to fit in all the people who wanted a place last time. I so hope you can make it for this one if you missed out last time.

There will be Gelli part 2 in the summer where we will be developing our prints with drawing and experimenting with using our prints to make repeatable images on fabric  and embellishing them with stitch so it would be great to do the beginners workshop to get some really good images to use for part 2.

The whole process is so addictive and if you have been thinking about getting a gelli plate this is a great way to try it out and buy one if you like it.

On May 23rd the very popular Altered Book workshop will be happening again.

There are lots of images from some of my Altered Books further back in this blog and also on my website: 

www.paulawatkins.co.uk

They are such a joy to make: to take an old unloved book and make it into a very personal piece of art feels like rescuing an old friend and giving her a breath of new life.

We will be learning lots of techniques for starting and working in our books. The day is suitable for beginners, experienced mixed media artists and art journallers and everyone who wants a day of playing with paint, print, glues and exciting art media.

Both workshops cost £65 for the day and include everything except lunch.

Contact me through my website to book.

Hey Gelli! What's next?

We had such a lot of fun at the Gelli Arts printing workshop. Thank you so much to all who came, I enjoyed every minute and didn't we make hundreds of prints!

Some of the  people who came to the workshop were new to Gelli and some had their own plates but hadn't used them much. A few people were already Gelli addicts and wanted another chance to play and learn new techniques.

That's the fun of Gelli plate printing though isn't it? Every time we play we learn a new way of making prints and find new effects that can be made by trying different tools and different combinations of layers and colours.

Here are a few photos of a few of the prints.

I didn't take many photos because I was having too much fun but these show a few of the many techniques we tried including printing with real leaves, using stamps, stencils, hand cut masks, hand cut printing blocks.

All these lovely prints can be used for backgrounds, card making, paper patchwork, collage etc but sometimes people ask...

'What next?' 'What else can I do with my prints?'

If you are addicted to making prints you can end up with boxes full of original, unique prints that you can't bear to use because they are too beautiful, and probably unrepeatable. Or you may be so busy making new works of art to think about using the old ones.

Well, lets use them! The next Gelli workshop, next Spring will be all about using our prints as a starting point in design!

This will include learning to draw into the patterns to make unique artwork which we can develop into fabric prints etc.

Below are some of the drawings that I have done on the prints I made from the demonstrations I did at the class. Some started as hopeless failures because that is what happens when people are watching a demo!
Ha ha.

Doodling has rescued them!

Watch this space to see what's next for these prints and drawings. And if you'd like to join in, I will be adding next year's workshop dates to the blog soon.