Triangles galore! Making a texture plate out of Contact paper

Always game to try new things with my Gelli plate, I made a texture plate following the instructions in the new Gelli Plate Printing book by Joan Bess.


What's a texture plate? Joan doesn't define it, but she gives lots of examples. It's a flat surface with shapes of different depths that you press onto a Gelli plate to create interesting designs.

Joan shows how to make texture plates out of all kinds of materials: foam, metal tape, molding paste, rubber bands, lace, corrugated cardboard, iron-on vinyl, and fabric stabilizer. I decided to experiment with Contact paper.

It was easy. (Well, keeping the Contact Paper from sticking to my fingers wasn't so easy.) I cut out lots of triangles and slapped them onto a cardboard rectangle, pointing in all directions, layering some on top of others. As the book suggested, I added a border around the edge to make it easier to handle. 

This is what my texture plate looks like after many uses. It's held up pretty well.

Below is one of the first prints I made using the plate. To make the triangle edges easier to see, I traced them with a white gel pen. It looks like shards of broken glass.

When I pressed the plate onto some scratch paper to remove extra paint, I noticed the interesting image it left behind. I tried using the plate as a stamp, pressing it directly onto paper without using the Gelli plate. 

I like the depth in these prints a bit better than the flatness of the first green print. What do you think? Have you tried this technique?