Now we're talking

While I was enjoying the process, the leaf prints I did at the weekend were nothing to write home about. Last night, I grabbed half an hour to try out a few textures with some other leaves I had picked up on my walks around the area.

I had been looking at a video on pre-inking the stencil, which I had bookmarked on Pinterest. But my previous attempts had not worked out - too much paint, too little, paint drying too quickly,... It was frustrating. But then I thought I could apply this to my leaf prints. How to delineate the overall shape of the leaf and to show the fine detail at the same time. It might be obvious to those of you more experienced in mono-printing techniques, but it was a breakthrough for me!

The steps are:

1. Apply acrylic paint to your gelli plate and spread it evenly with a brayer
2. Drop a few leaves onto the paint - textured side down
3. Press your paper down. Rub it well with the palm of your hand to ensure good adherence of the paint to the page.
4. Lift the paper - but the trick is to keep an edge of the paper on the plate (just like the lady shows in the video) so you have good registration (alignment) - and pick up the leaves and set them aside
5. Press your paper down again, pressing gently and evenly with the palm of the hand.
6. Lift the paper
7. Voilà!