We had such a lot of fun at the Gelli Arts printing workshop. Thank you so much to all who came, I enjoyed every minute and didn't we make hundreds of prints! Some of the people who came to the workshop were new to Gelli and some had their own plates but hadn't used them much. A few people were already Gelli addicts and wanted another chance to play and learn new techniques. That's the fun of Gelli plate printing though isn't it? Every time we play we learn a new way of making prints and find new effects that can be made by trying different tools and different combinations of layers and colours. Here are a few photos of a few of the prints. I didn't take many photos because I was having too much fun but these show a few of the many techniques we tried including printing with real leaves, using stamps, stencils, hand cut masks, hand cut printing blocks. All these lovely prints can be used for backgrounds, card making, paper patchwork, collage etc but sometimes people ask... 'What next?' 'What else can I do with my prints?' If you are addicted to making prints you can end up with boxes full of original, unique prints that you can't bear to use because they are too beautiful, and probably unrepeatable. Or you may be so busy making new works of art to think about using the old ones. Well, lets use them! The next Gelli workshop, next Spring will be all about using our prints as a starting point in design! This will include learning to draw into the patterns to make unique artwork which we can develop into fabric prints etc. Below are some of the drawings that I have done on the prints I made from the demonstrations I did at the class. Some started as hopeless failures because that is what happens when people are watching a demo! Ha ha. Doodling has rescued them! Watch this space to see what's next for these prints and drawings. And if you'd like to join in, I will be adding next year's workshop dates to the blog soon.