Make your own Gelli Plate

Hello my dear crafty friends!  Welcome to my post with one home made crafty tool that you can use again and again.  So here we go!

For a long time I wanted to buy a printing plate (aka Gelli Plate). I got one, but it's too big for my small experiments as I am very new to this mono printing skill. So when I first saw ETI Easy Mold® Silicone Rubber and understood that it's kind of soft after hardening, I thought that it would be a perfect product for a small home made printing plate. 

I picked the ETI mold that was a good size for ATC/TAG projects; covered it with a thin layer of Mold Release Conditioner  and let it dry.

Then I made a mix of both equal parts of Silicone Rubber using ETI measure glass and wooden mixture device. I thought about 3/4'' high plate when it's done and with a help of DH  we picked 100 ml  of each product  for the mix. Bingo! The thickness of a finished plate is just perfect! 

 

After this beauty had a good overnight rest I made small cuts of extras inside the mold with my favorite clay blade. The extras were really minimal and easy to manage.

 

And with a small help of the same blade- keep your fingers out of the blade side- my blue beauty was out.

Now  this was a time to check if it works. As I am new to this mono printing I am sure my prints are totally " out of the blue". But then it WORKS!

And I don't really have good acrylics or the right tools.

 

Here are some samples of my so called prints.

It's not the plate problem; the plate works great. It's just me waiting too long, not using good paints or good printing paper (I just don't have some yet)

So as you can see we can make our own printing plates with ETI Easy Mold® Silicone Rubber. Go for it! Try to make your own plate that fits your art.

I want to thank ETI  and Ann Butler, who made those guest blog post possible!