WOYWW #464: Image transfers with the Gelli plate

Hello to all my WOYWW friends and other lovely people visiting! I'm here again for another round of desk share. Before I get started though, I must relay some news from Shoshi, who can't take part in WOYWW today. She's asked me to let you all know that she had to go back into hospital due to an infection last Monday. Hopefully, she's back home by now. Please send some healing thoughts her way for a speedy recovery! Get well soon, Shoshi!

Moving on to my desk: here's a photo I took yesterday, though the activities mainly took place over the weekend. I had just discovered a technique involving magazine image transfers with a Gelli plate after reading my bloggy friend, Lynette's recent post. She shared a video by Gelli Arts that I somehow managed to miss earlier.  When I first saw this technique, I literally had to drop everything and try it! This was the aftermath of my frantic printing session and it looks like Oreo got bowled over as well:

This technique works remarkably well under the right conditions, though sometimes it's a hit and miss affair. Luckily, some of my "fails" resulted in some exciting grungy textures. Images from a Vogue magazine worked best for me, but I didn't get good results with book pages. I've also tried transferring laser and inkjet prints but that didn't work at all. I think it's all about how the ink in the original image interacts with the paint on your Gelli plate. 

Here's an image imprint left on my Gelli plate, after I had applied a thin layer of dark paint and pulled it off with a magazine page. Some of the paint gets left behind and at this point, you should be able to see whether you will get a good transfer. Then it's just a matter of pulling the dark paint off with a lighter layer. (Please refer to the original video for full instructions.) The orientation of the final print will be the same as the original image, which is important when you want to transfer text. 

Here are a few other prints I pulled, mainly of people, but this technique can also be used to transfer other images (buildings, landscapes, objects, etc). I've found that high contrast images with a light background work best. 

And here are some of my fails that resulted in grungy textures. You might still be able to tell what the original image was. I will use these for backgrounds rather than focal points - in a way, they're more exciting and versatile than the successful image transfers! I might just have to create more fails on purpose!

I have a few more photos to share today. We built a huge fire at the bottom of  our garden on Saturday as we had a lot of garden waste to burn. This is what it looked like when it all burned down to ashes, just smoldering away, quietly - it was kind of magical in the setting sun - something I call a perfect moment, when everything is right with the world. The silly selfie with my son was taken half an hour earlier before the lights faded and later we had to run back to the house when a thunder storm erupted. It was all very atmospheric and I'm so glad I documented it! 

I'm off to work in an hour but I'll be around later in the week!

Thanks for all your visits - I always try to get back to everyone who comments!

Have a lovely day!