I've been printing....

And I've been playing with gelatin plates.  I wanted to expand what I did before when I made a plate with only gelatin and water.  I made several prints, some of which I was much in love with, some not so much.  I wish I could say that this time the results were better, but the word different will have to do.

First I made what is supposed to be a more permanent plate with water, gelatin and glycerin.  I used the Frugal Crafter's recipe for a 4 by 6 ish plate.  1.5 cups of water, 1.5 cups of glycerin, 6 Tablespoons of gelatin.  Easy peasy, or so it seems.  Let me start by saying that I am not the greatest measurer, but I ended up with a too big container, and the plate was too thin.  It disintegrated a bit over a couple of days.  In the meantime, I made about a dozen prints that I considered first step background.  This is what a couple of them looked like.  I need to say that I limited myself to black, white and grey in this process, as I wanted to see what I was doing and not get into color just yet.

There were many more, but these are representative.  I had a major cold/fluish and got tired after I had done a dozen or so and I quit for the day.  I came back on day 2 with the intent of playing with black, white and grey again on top of these plates.  The plate had not held up well probably because it was too thin, and it started to crack when I took it out of the tin I had stored it in.  I LOVE the cracks.  A clean edge does not interest me, so this was great.  An example of my  work with Polaroid Image Transfers will show you the kind of edges I am fond of.

I had cut a stencil from an ad printed on heavy paper, and I just used that to see how it would all hold together.  I used my two new 'colors' and my single stencil and did some playing.  The results, in part, looked like this:

The big cracks in the paint in these are all from the disintegration of the plate.  I am going to have to figure out how to make this happen when I want it!

after this I had to junk the plate, it was determined to fall apart. This is what it looked like. You can also see it was a bit thin....

 I intend to melt it and use it again. I want to work on the texture, however.  This felt very sticky to me, it could have been for several reasons so more about that later.   In any case, it was a fun 2 days and I think I am certainly not done.  I can use these prints to do more and I can work back into them with various color media.  More to come.