Gelli printing with potato mashers/wisk

On my way to the grocery yesterday, I just had to stop by Traderbakers, a permanent flea market. I haven’t been in there for a while, so I was looking forward to seeing if they had anything I might use in my art processes.

I will be taking a batik class in April at Making Ends Meet in Kentucky. I thought this would be a great place to find some old potato mashers to use with the wax. I lucked out and found three vintage tools – a wisk and two mashers that I thought might work. When I returned home I decided to test drive them with my gelli printing plate.

Potato mashers
Wisk and potato mashers
Using one of the potato mashers on the gelli plate.
Using the wisk on the gelli plate after spreading the paint.

Click on the pictures to take a closer look. For the final layer on these prints I used the wisk as a stamp and dipped it in the paint.

Then I used a couple pieces of my marbled fabric. For these I just used the wisk.

Marbled fabric gelli printed
Marbled fabric gelli printed

masher7I loved all of the circles and lines.  I really liked the added depth I got with adding gelli printing to my fabric. The more I use the gelli printing plate I find that I don’t need to use a lot of paint. The less is better especially when adding a second or third layer. I also liked using the wisk on the cardstock as a stamp.  I need to do more experimenting.