Gelatin Printing and stamping

Last week, my friend Ellen and I got together to try gelatin printing. I've been reading and thinking about this for quite a while, but hadn't tried it yet, and I had recently purchased another book that included the technique, it was time!

I pulled out my trays of fabric paint, brayers, stamps, picked some leaves from the garden and covered the table with a plastic tablecloth to protect it.We turned out the gelatin onto foil, so we'd be able to lift and move it if we wanted to.


At first, we tried to use larger pieces of fabric, but ended up tearing it into pieces that were just a bit larger than the gelatin, and found it much easier to work with. We poured paint onto the gelatin an dused brayers to spread it out, and sometimes forks worked even better to spread several colors without overblending the colors. We used forks, paint scrapers, and anything we could think of, including caps from spray bottles. Whenever we used stamps to create designs in the paint, we stamped the ink off onto another piece of fabric, or in my case, my painting apron.

The time flew by, and we ended up with fabric spread out to dry on two racks. Here's the rack that had most of our fabrics - mine are mostly in the front half, and Ellen's in the back half. I've taken some close-ups of some of Ellen's fabrics, and once I take some of mine, I'll post my favorites.



Although we only needed one gelatin plate each, both of us mixed up more than one pan of gelatin, because we didn't think they would hold up nearly as long as they did, and hopefully we'll use them to print more fabirc before they dry out and become unusable.