Guest Designer Frieda Oxenham

I was rather taken with the gelli plate printed deli and copy paper I made for my January 2024 Project. They were made using stencil L988 Earth and there were a lot of prints left over so I decided to make a few more papers like them using different stencils.

Here is the tutorial:

1.     Using a 8 x 11” gelli plate with Payne’s Grey as well as Dark Blue acrylic paint, cover the gelli plate with one of the paints, put a stencil on top and take prints on both deli and copy paper. Remove the stencil and take more prints. I used the following stencils: L141 Puzzle, L992 Circle Around, LL1005 Shape Collection and L931 Winter Wood.

2.     I couldn’t resist some overprinting on some of the sheets.

3.     I added some vintage and wrapping paper to the mix of collage materials. 

4.     Glue (I used an UHU glue stick but matte medium also works fine) collage pieces onto the background. In my case the background consisted of 4 x 6” Strathmore watercolor postcards. I was only going to work on a few but somehow used up the entire pack of 15 postcards.

5.     Using a 5 x 7” gelli plate and a variety of translucent acrylic paints (mine were by Golden), take partial prints on your postcards till you’re happy with how they look. One of the colours I used was a gold one to add a bit of sparkle. 

6.     Glue on some more imagery from the papers made in step 1 to some of the postcards where you feel it is needed.

7.     Outline the imagery from step 6 with oil pastels

8.     Glue on matching (in colour) postage stamps.

9.     Edge the cards with a gold paint marker (mine is by Posca).

10.  Finish off the cards with a layer of fluid matte medium