Prints from my 8x10 Gelli Plate had to be trimmed down to my chosen size of 6.5 (the height of the pages) by 9.5 (the width of a two-page spread). These are the pile of trim pieces that were left. I plan on using them to trim out greeting cards and to weave together...stay tuned. (Can you tell that I was raised by a Great Depression-era mother who threw out nothing and used everything....or else saved it to be useful "someday"??)
Then I sorted the pages into color family groups and made up signatures of four pieces of paper each, scored each at the fold line and then trimmed them.
After choosing the pages to make up each signature, I trimmed the edges with the paper trimmer to even them up.
Then I took apart each signature and edged the pages with a black sharpie. I like the way the pages look with that extra step, but it's kind of a tedious thing. Had to wait til the signatures were trimmed in order to not be trimming off the edging, so I had to wait til all the pages were put together/trimmed before edging.
Here are some of the signatures, before the holes are punched.
Each one is four pieces, making eight pages. I tried to get facing pages coordinating and to have a center spread that was interesting. Some of the pages are card stock (most of them), some are deli paper, some are baking parchment. a couple are from a Crate and Barrel shopping bag, and some are pages from an old science dictionary ca. 1968. The dictionary pages were kind of fragile so I reinforced the center, where the holes would be punched and where the fold was, with paper tape and sandwiched them between cardstock pages.
I tried to punch holes with my "pokey tool" but was frustrated with that. So I took out my trusty Japanese screw punch and, after marking the punch spots with the signatures lined up, in order, I used a 1 mm bit and whipped through the stack. Easy Peasy. Love my Japanese screw punch. I don't use it much, but when I need it, it always comes through for me! I was so happy to find that I had a small bit that would work in this application--I had never used that bit before.
At this point, I realized that I didn't have front and back covers, so I trimmed a random piece of cardboard to size, gesso'd the front and back, found some prints to use for the covers.....and will cover them and begin stitching either tonight or tomorrow....
In the meantime, I had played with Dylusions sprays on a stencil. Spray on, let it dry, then brayer the plate with white paint. Place the stencil on the white paint and it activates the dry ink.
This was the first print I pulled after removing the stencil.
And this was the ghost print. I am a reformed 'clean plate club' person and now am proud to be a Dirty Girl Printer. I print dirty and you can see what happens with the remnants of previous prints on this plate. This was just oooh & awesome....very cool. (This is how one becomes addicted to this process! Now, showing this process to my husband, the engineer, he could care less about the colors and the textures....all he wanted to know was: what are you going to DO with that? .....sigh....)
Stay tuned....
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