Thank-you cards made from practice Gelli prints

I'd heard the warnings but didn't heed them. Gelli plate mono-printing is indeed addictive. The plate and its paraphernalia have taken over my kitchen. 


To get the mess off my counter, I erected a long table and hung wires above the bookcases holding my cookbooks. Even my cats were displaced -- their food dishes were moved into the hallway.

Of course, all this extra space only leads to more printing -- and more prints! Piles and piles of them. They're just practice, and most aren't worth hanging on the wall. To keep them out of my craft hoard, I decided to turn a few of them into thank-you cards.

In my most recent Gelli spree, I played around with masks and stencils. For the print below, I made my own mask out of card stock. My husband loaned me his magic circle cutter so the circle edges came out completely smooth. 

As I learn more about printing, the more I think in terms of math. For this circle print, the formula was 1 layer red + 1 masked ghost print in blue + 1 layer white textured with bubble wrap. I think.

I trimmed off the edges and cut the print in half. To finish the card, I stamped "thank you" on a blank piece of paper and affixed it to the front. 

For the next two cards, I used prints with hand-drawn black circles.

For the card below, I stamped the words directly onto the print. The purple was too faint to be legible against the blue background, so I outlined the letters and triangles with a silver felt pen.

(BTW, I made the stamp based on a design and instructions in Julie Blazer's book, Carve, Stamp, Play.)