I knew the first day I tried gelli printing that I was hooked. In that first day of experimenting I cut out paper circles to use for a stencil mask. It worked great but I wanted to figure out something I could use that would not fall apart after a couple of uses. I decided to try cutting up a plastic page protector. I drew my circles on paper and stuck the paper inside the page protector. Then I cut through all three layers (paper and both sides of plastic page protector.) That gave me 2 plastic circles and one paper circle in one cut. Then I thought why stop with circles? I cut out diamonds, squares, triangles, ovals, squiggly lines, flowers, chevrons, and swirls. While cutting the flowers and swirls, I decided cutting through three layers was not going to work as easy. So I traced the design onto the page protector with a dry erase marker and cut them individually. I put them into small plastic bags for storage. As you can tell from the picture, some of them have paint on them. I decided to let the paint dry on the stencils rather than wash them off for now just to make it easier to see the pieces when I place them on the gelli plate. We’ll see how that works next time I use them! 

When I watch some of the demos on making gelli prints, I see many stencils that I would like to purchase. Since that is not in the budget right now, these stencil masks are my answer. I do like using the stencil masks because it gives more flexibility in positioning the shapes than I would get with a regular stencil. The stencil masks can also be flipped over and pressed onto other paper to remove some of the paint on the stencil for even more design possibilities.

I think I had the most fun playing with the spiral stencil masks.

On this one I printed layers of spirals and then circles for the last layer.This print uses the diamond shaped stencil masks on top of a layer of chevron mask.Triangle shaped stencil masks make a pinwheel effect on this print.I like the effect of a couple of layers using square masking stencils on this print.One layer of flower stencil masks on top of several layers of background prints make a fun print.I printed a flower using ovals and a circle stencil mask and then later used chevron stencil masks on this print.These chevrons were printed on top of multiple layers of ghost prints.On this last print I used some squiggly line stencil masks that really looked more like worms than waves along with some other texture tools. Then I used the tear drop shaped stencil masks to look like raindrops in my “ocean”. I like the way it turned out. The fun thing about using the gelli plate is you never know for sure what you will end up with. And if you don’t like the way it is progressing, you can do another layer which may completely change the look to something you do like.

You can make your own gelli plate by reading about how I made mine. Let your creative juices flow.