Gelatin Printing, the Beginning

Here are my very first experiments with gelatin printing. I followed the recipe in Rayna Gillman's awesome new book, "Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth". It was so much fun! I highly recommend the book. It's the best book I've purchased in a long time and I've only scratched the surface of the techniques covered in the book!

The first piece I laid down too much purple paint on the gelatin and overlaid that with morning glories (living in southern California has some great benefits like year round access to live plant materials!). The top piece which is very dark is the result after we tried to wash out some of the excess paint. The next darkest one was attempt 2 and looks better except for the "volunteer" loose thread that jumped into the mix, LOL.

These pieces were done using PFD pima cotton that I had on hand for dyeing. I didn't realy like the stark background so switched after this grouping.

This piece was done in two different printings. One was on the gelatin after the first printing was done which removed some of that excess paint. The other was the leaves themselves turned over after they lay on the gelatin for the first printing. I was amazed with the detail of the veining in the leaves that was visible.

I printed a lot more than this, but I hope this whets your appetite to come back another day to see what else I did.

Lisa