Gelli Printing with Young Friends

Rubbing paint off Gelli Plate onto paper

Anyone who has tried gelli printing with the new gelli plates from Gelli Arts has fallen in love with the technique. The ability (for even those who don't feel very artistic) to make monoprints that are layered and painterly is addicting.

So to spread the love I got together with my good friend's  two creative granddaughters who love art. We laid out the brand new gelli plate, new tubes of colorful paint, new brayers (small rollers for spreading paint) and lots of paper and paper towels on one of their first days off for summer vacation.

It turned out to be a really special day. I felt like I was at summer camp. The girls, ages 7 and 4, took to the painting right away, and then ran away with it. I was so impressed with the color choices they made, having originally thought that they would stick with the pastel paints. I'm not sure why I thought that, but they soon started getting out the neon and the black paints and doing awesome things with them.

What a great way to spend a morning!

Here are some samples of their work:

Making sure the paper is covered with paint from plate underneath

Spreading the paint with a brayer

Pulling a print from the Gelli Plate 

A neon butterfly

A psychedelic print from the Gelli Plate

It's Time to Preserve Old Photographs

Sugar Bowl Confectionery, Butler PA, 1940s

It's scary to think of what is becoming of our old family photos. Too many of them sit in boxes in basements or -- god forbid! -- attics, crumbling away, taking our pasts with them.

Make it a priority if you can to have older family members tell the histories of your photos and identify who is pictured. And commit to saving your photos now with the help of information from these web sites on how to preserve your irreplaceable family photos:

http://www.wisebread.com/maintaining-memories-how-to-save-old-photographs

http://lifestyle.howstuffworks.com/family/heirlooms/properly-store-really-old-photos.htm

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/digitalphoto/a/digital_photos.htm

If there is one particular photo you would like to share with the world, visit here  It may be hard to choose just one, but at least you will have done that.