Faux Cyanotype Prints using the Gelli® Plate

[Music] hello i'm teresa welcome to my channel thank you for joining me today today i'm going to be creating some faux cyanotype prints now for those of you that are not familiar with cyanotypes um they're basically using a type of card or paper that has a chemical on it that reacts to sunlight and dyes a blue color once once exposed to sunlight quite often cyanotype prints are depicting natural botanical items such as leaves and things like that and i'm going to use the gel plate today to create something similar and but using acrylic paint on a gel plate rather than using cyanotype chemicals and paper once i've done the printing i'm going to show you how you can just finish your projects off by you know creating some cards tags framed prints all very very simple um to do and needs minimal supplies so if you don't have many um supplies this one's one for you i have done other prints using leaves before and during this video i will link to a previous video that i did if you want to go back and have a look at that one but i'm going to clear these out of the way and get on with showing you today's process today we're going to be working with minimal supplies um i've got my gel plate here this is my five inch by seven inch jelly arts gel plate i've got a brayer today i'm using the speed ball soft rubber brayer um quite often use the ranger red one it makes no difference which one you use and in keeping with the cyanotype i'm going to be using cyan blue paint i'm using the decoart media fluid acrylic in primary cyan i mean it doesn't have to be that specific blue of paint you know if you're using a different brand this true blue here is a very similar color you don't even have to do it blue but obviously if you want to make a faux cyanotype it would be a blue print i've got some smooth white card this is just about a sort of 250 gsm smooth white card i've also got some book pages this is an old shakespeare book and a dictionary i'm going to do some printing on that as well just for a change and i have a selection of leaves from the garden i've got a couple here that are off a grapevine a couple of fronds of fern and a couple of sprays from um some acer brushes in the garden as well apart from that um i've got a scrap of paper to the side for cleaning any excess paint off my brayer i've got some kitchen paper in case i need to clean up and i've got some masking tape that i'm going to be using to attach my paper so that i can do a double print in exactly the same place so i'm just going to move my leaves temporarily out of the way and i'm going to begin by applying a layer of blue paint to the gel plate now if you wanted to do a two-tone print you can begin by putting a different color of paint on the plate and this is just going to be blue and white like a traditional cyanotype would be i will pop a link up in the corner to other leaf print videos that i've done where i've used two different colors but as i say i want this to look like a faux cyanotype so that would just be in blue and white so applying a nice even coat of the cyan blue i'm going to take one of my leaves and to begin with i'm going to use one of these fern fronds and i'm going to place my leaves so that all the veining detail is down on the plate and this will help give some additional texture to our print so i'm going to pop that pretty much in the middle i'm going to take my piece of smooth white cardstock just pop that lightly on the top then going to press that down and holding it in place i'm just going to use some masking tape just to create a hinge at one end here so that when i lift it off i can replace it back down in exactly the same place i'm going to press firmly all over carefully peel that back and keeping this still taped down lift my leaf off and then replace the paper back down again to transfer the detail that was from underneath where the leaf was and there we have our faux cyanotype print of our leaf frond now i need to clean off the remains of this print before we do another one um just so that we can we don't want to contaminate the print with any detail from another leaf so just going to squirt some water on there and clean this off and then we can go on to create a second print in exactly the same [Music] but way a while i thought that i wouldn't break [Music] i need something else to clear my head someone to tell me how to live instead just open your eyes and take my advice stop falling the dice and just compromise it's the chance of your life okay makes you feel like take control of your own life without any thought i keep moving on i don't even care if my soul is gone [Music] just open your eyes and take my advice stop pulling the dice and just compromise it's the chance of your life [Music] so once you've got your selection of prints we just need to take off the masking tape and just give them a while to dry i mean it's pretty thin coats of paint so they never take too long and then we can think about converting these into a finished project so i'm going to go away clear away my plate and paint trim these down and show you how you can make these into cards or into a nice little bit of wall art various things like that and i'll be back with the finished projects and here are the finished projects that i created using these prints i've taken a couple of them and popped them inside these glass frames and this is the one that was done on the shakespeare page just trimmed that down and fitted it in the frame and left that as it is apologies for the reflection from the ring light above but you know that hanging on the wall is just going to look so pretty you don't really need to do anything else to it this one i trimmed down and popped in the frame i added one of the tim holtz chit chat stickers to it um that was all that was needed to be done there i've created a tag from this one just die cut out a tag added some silk cord at the top and again little chit chat sticker mounted onto some black card and held in place with staples and the other prints i created cards with so here i die cut my print into a circle mounted it on a five inch square card just doodled around the edge with a black pen and stamped a sentiment on there the sentiment if you're interested is from this gina k designs and hero arts collaboration set which is called friendship blooms also used another stamp from that set on this card here i used this quote here that says let us be grateful to the people who make us happy for they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom so just stamp that directly onto the print matted it onto a little bit of a gold colored card and onto a card blank and the final card was this one here that was the print was stamped on dictionary page i just tore around the leaf print matted that onto some black card and onto a card blank and again added a little chit chat sticker in the corner there to finish off now as always you can make far more complicated cards projects things like that if you want to but i do appreciate that a lot of my subscribers who enjoyed the printing and not necessarily card makers which is why i always try and keep these projects fairly simple you may not have lots and lots of products so you know most of us could find a little sentiment or print off a sentiment on using a computer we may have a a couple of stamps with sentiments on so all easy projects for you to complete with minimal supplies the frames i'm glad i found a use for these i picked these up um quite a while ago now probably well over 12 months ago in a sale i thought they were going to be really pretty to hang on the wall and they've just been sat in a drawer so really grateful that i've found something to pop in those now and make use of them and as always hope that this has given you some suggestions on what to do with prince you may have other prints but you can use them in the same way that i've done today in these finished projects but as always if you enjoyed the video please leave me a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you again soon bye [Music] i need something else to clear my head someone to tell me how to live instead just open your eyes and take my advice

Channel: Teresa Auden

Views: 14,222

Keywords: cyanotype, gel plate, gelli arts, gelli plate, monoprinting, printmaking, tutorial, leaf prints, decoart projects, made for makers

Id: -yVjB-6lRqY

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020