Gel Printing 101

I've been eyeing up the new gel printing plates out there for sale-but they are a little pricey for me.  So...the cheapskate side of me found a recipe for a home made plate and I managed to make it and even get it right.  I boiled 2 cups of water and added 8 packets of Knox gelatine.  I stirred until it was totally dissolved and then poured it into a little square pan lined with plastic wrap.  It set up really well overnight just sitting out on the counter.  Tonight I gathered together some things to make marks, stencils, and masks and proceeded to print with plain old craft paint and a brayer.   It wasn't hard to do and was fun.  I need to make myself a bigger work space for the next round of printing.  I'm thinking of cutting the plate down to ATC size and printing each card separately.  I think I'll be saving my pennies to get a larger store bought one to make bigger prints at some point in the future.  

Happy Holidays

I haven't been blogging much lately.  I've been too busy with the holiday madness-or maybe just lazy-no- let's go with too busy.  I did manage to spend some time Christmas day spinning up some art yarn.  It was a while since I had done any spinning.  It felt good.  I have a New Year's resolution-more time spent spinning-less time nodding off in front of the TV.

Book learnin'

I haven't blogged in forever, it seems.  I've been puttering around with all kinds of crafty stuff, and basically getting not much done.  My latest craze, though, has been making leather bound books.  I happened upon some really pretty journals made by other folks that are selling the books for a lot more than I'm willing to spend.  Sooooo, I started digging around in all those corners where I've been hoarding the scrap pieces of leather that I dig out of the garbage at work (we do upholstery work there).  It seems I have enough scraps to make a couple of cows (that's a lot by the way).  I've made a few journals now and I'm very happy with them.  I hope to make more so I can use up all that leather.