Wishing you all the happiest Christmas and and peaceful, healthy and happy 2015. Will try very hard to be a more regular blogger next year! - Hilary xx

Playing with other peoples toys

One of the bonuses of demonstrating at the big shows, is that sometimes other people ask you to see what you can do with their toys. This happened at Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show this last November. Jamie from Colouriscious has gorgeous wooden printing blocks in an extraordinary choice of designs. She handed me a few to have a play with on my gelli. So I did - I like playing

  

plain old positive and negatives .. always full of possibilities ... especially with all the texture the gelli plate adds

So I did the same onto thick khadi paper. This was the 6" x 6" gelli and I picked it up and applied it to the paper like a stamp. This allowed me to still get a good print on the thicker material

So then I  tried using the same block with my baby gelli .. I really like the partial print it makes

So I made some more of those

 

then I got out a couple of different blocks, another colour of paint and my 5" x 7" gelli as well - using them all picked up and applied to the thick khadi like a stamp

 

Another piece of khadi paper, stamped and then overdyed

 

Some fabric also stamped and overdyed. Some areas also have detail added with neocolour 1 crayons as I was showing someone that they do work on fabric (not machine washable though) and will resist the dye

 

then - whilst I had the crayons out, I did some rubbings from the blocks - neocolour 1 not 2 (the latter are water soluble)

 

and of course all the off prints had to go somewhere .. so here they are, also overdyed.

A very small play - but lots of possibilities for design here. I'm finding the combination of different size gellis very interesting  and especially love the ability ot pick up those small boys. 

I'll show you some more examples of printing done at Harrogate next time .. some of the materials shown below. I'm trying to keep posts a bit shorter, in the hope I might manage to get them done more often!

Talk soon -Hilary x