• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • DYEING
    • Eco Printing and Eco Dyeing
    • Yarn Dyeing
    • Fabric Dyeing
    • Natural Dyeing
  • FELTING
    • What is Felting? A Beginner’s Guide
    • How to Needle Felt (for Beginners)
    • Wet Felting Tutorials
    • Needle Felting Tutorials
    • Fiber 101
  • PATTERNS
    • Pattern Roundups
    • Free Indie Crochet Patterns
    • Free Indie Knitting Patterns
  • CRAFTS
    • Home Crafts
    • Holidays
      • Christmas
      • Easter
      • Gift Ideas
  • E-BOOKS

FiberArtsy.com logo

menu icon
go to homepage
  • DYEING
  • FELTING
  • CRAFTS
  • PATTERNS
  • E-BOOKS
  • search icon
    Homepage link
    • DYEING
    • FELTING
    • CRAFTS
    • PATTERNS
    • E-BOOKS
  • ×

    Gel Printing Cards for Valentines (Beginners Project!)

    Updated: Jan 3, 2022 by Annette Browning

    Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. If you click and buy, we may receive a commission.
    See Disclosure for details.

    Learn how easy it is to make your own unique, printed greeting cards with a Gel Printing Plate or Gel Press. Printmaking made easy!

    Have you heard about the latest craze in the crafting world?? It is the Reusable Gel Printing Plate such as the Gelli Plate or Gel Press plate which takes monoprinting and general printmaking to a whole new level.

    I gotta tell you, this is an awesome fun way of gel printing cards for Valentines, Birthdays, Christmas and Mother’s day cards as well as mixed media journals, bookmarks and much more.

    gel printed papers with hearts for greeting cards
    In this Article:
    • What is Gel Printing?
      • Supplies needed:
      • Notes on supplies:
    • Making your Gel Printed Valentines:
      • Step 1: Add paint to the gel plate
      • Step 2: Use the brayer to distribute the paint across the plate
      • Step 3: Add texture to the background
      • Step 4: Transfer the paint to the paper
      • Step 5: Peel the paper from the plate
      • Step 6: Add paint for the second layer
      • Step 7: Distribute the paint
      • Step 8: Add texture
      • Step 9: Place the stencil on the plate
      • Step 10: Pull the image
    • Turning your gel printed papers into Valentine greeting cards
    • How do you clean gel plates?
    • How do you store your gel plate?
    • Is Gelli Printing the same thing as Gel Plate Printing?

    What is Gel Printing?

    Gel Printing is a new mono print, printmaking technique that utilizes a special tool called a Gel Plate.

    This plate is made with a permanent, gel-type material that picks up and transfers paints, inks and other mediums to paper, fabric, etc.

    If you have ever tried printmaking with a lino plate, you know how labor intensive and time consuming that can be.

    A Gel Plate, on the other hand, is always ready to go, easy to clean and can be reused over and over again.

    Gel Printing Plates go by different brand names including Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate and Gel Press and come in a variety of different sizes from small, card size to giant 12″ by 12″ plates. This tutorial uses the Speedball 8″ x 10″ Plate.

    Gel Press brayer

    Learn how to make your own envelopes to go with these gel printed cards for Valentines!

    Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links which means if you click and buy,
    we may receive a small commission. See full Disclosure for details.

    Supplies needed:

    • Gel Plate
    • Brayer
    • Cardstock Paper (smooth finish) *
    • Blank Cards and Envelopes *
    • Acrylic Paints
    • Texture Tools **
    • Stencils and Rubber Stamps
    • Scrap Paper
    • X-acto Knife ***
    • Cutting Mat
    • Metal Ruler
    • Tacky Glue
    Speedball Gel Plate Brayer X-Acto knife and Cutting Mat Acrylic Craft Paint blank greeting cards and envelopes

    Notes on supplies:

    * You can make your gel prints directly on the blank cards, if you like. This time, I wanted a little more control over the final look, so I printed on the cardstock paper and glued the trimmed prints to my cards.

    ** Texture tools can be anything that makes an impression. You can purchase special stencils and rubber texture stamps but you can also easily make your own.

    Simple household items such as bubble wrap, burlap, textured shelf liners or placemats and the inside of cardboard all leave wonderful background texture.

    Furthermore, you can use empty tape rolls, chopsticks, crumpled paper, forks and leaves or feathers to make interesting designs.

    *** If you choose to print directly on the blank cards, you will not need the X-Acto Knife and Cutting Mat.

    Speedball Gel Printing Plate
    (Note: Normally I do not clean my Gel Plate which makes for more interesting and textured prints)
    Clean Gel Printing Plate
    Clean Gel Plate (see bottom of post for tips on how to clean your plate)
    hand holding a rubber brayer for mono printing
    Speedball Rubber Brayer or Roller for printmaking
    piece of burlap, cardboard and bubble wrap
    Homemade texture tools: burlap fabric, bubble wrap, cardboard (opened up)
    rubber stamps, chopsticks, plastic fork, texture papers, heart stickers
    Various tools for creating designs and texture: rubber stamps, chopsticks and forks, notched or edged paper, heart shapes
    homemade stencil of a heart
    Homemade Heart Stencil (note: you can use both the positive and the negative cutout)
    Astrobrights cardstock paper
    I used Astrobrights Premium Cardstock
    Blank Cards and Envelopes
    Optional: Blank Greeting Cards with Envelopes

    Making your Gel Printed Valentines:

    Okay, you have gathered all of your supplies, you have covered your table (right?) so we are ready to get started making our cool gel printed cards for Valentines gifts.

    For this tutorial, I will show you how I printed three papers with different looks and textures so that you can see how easy it is to use the various tools. If you have an idea for other textures, by all means, feel free to experiment!

    Before you begin printing: Go ahead and open all of your paint bottles. For these particular prints, you don’t want the paint to dry completely before you pull the image.

    Place the gel plate in front of you and your scrap paper (for cleaning the brayer) next to that (on your right if right handed and your left is you are left handed)

    clean gel plate and a brayer with purple paint

    Gel Print #1:

    With the first print, I decided to make a lighter background with a darker heart shape. For this, I used my handmade heart stencil.

    Step 1: Add paint to the gel plate

    For the background, I added small amounts of white and silver paint in little dots all across the plate.

    putting drops of paint on a gel plate

    Step 2: Use the brayer to distribute the paint across the plate

    You can cover the entire plate or only certain areas. Roll the paint so it just covers the plate but the paint layer is not too thick.

    Clean the brayer by rolling it on the scrap paper. (Set the brayer upside down to keep it from sticking to the paper.)

    Note: if you have too much paint, simply pick it up with the brayer and roll it off on the scrap paper.

    rolling the brayer to distribute silver paint

    Step 3: Add texture to the background

    To add some interest to the background paint, I used a rubber stamp and the ridges of the cardboard.

    a hand making flower designs in paint with rubber stamps
    hand pressing cardboard on paint
    hand pressing cardboard on paint in opposite direction
    (Place the cardboard in the other direction to make a grid)
    silver paint with lines and flower shapes

    Step 4: Transfer the paint to the paper

    Now, take a piece of your cardstock paper and place it over the plate. Then with the flat of your hands, rub the paper all around … including the edges …pressing gently to make sure you have good contact between the paint and the paper.

    hand pushing white paper on the painted gel plate

    Step 5: Peel the paper from the plate

    Now you are going to ‘pull’ the image. You do this by lifting one corner of the paper and then gently peeling the sheet off the gel plate.

    hand peeling the paper off the gel plate
    hand holding paper with a textured silver print

    Step 6: Add paint for the second layer

    For the next layer, I added dots of pink and red paint. Since I was using my heart stencil for this print, the paint was placed in the center of the plate only.

    hand adding pink drops of paint

    Step 7: Distribute the paint

    Again, roll the paint with the brayer (center only) and clean the brayer off on the scrap paper. (For some reason, I don’t have a photo of that step)

    Step 8: Add texture

    To add some texture to your gel printing, I simply placed a piece of burlap fabric on the paint and gently pressed down.

    piece of burlap on top of pink paint
    pink paint on a gel plate

    Step 9: Place the stencil on the plate

    Decide where you want the heart shape to be and place your stencil.

    heart stencil on top of pink paint

    Step 10: Pull the image

    Pick up the previously printed paper and replace it, face down on your gel plate. Again, with your hands, rub all across the paper, including the edges.

    Gently peel back the paper. Let it dry and your paper is ready to turn into a greeting card.

    Heart shape printed on textured silver paint

    Gel Print #2:

    With the second print, I wanted to show you how using the other part (the heart) of the stencil works. Basically, we will be making a negative image. This was a one layer print.

    I added dots of silver, dark blue and lime green paint to my plate.

    (Note the paint left on the gel plate from the previous print! This will give our printed Valentine card a lot of extra texture and interest)

    drops of blue, silver and green paint on a gel plate

    Then I rolled it and cleaned off the brayer on the scrap paper.

    hand rolling a brayer to spread paint

    Added texture with the bubble wrap and cardboard . . .

    hand pressing bubble wrap onto paint
    hand pushing cardboard on paint

    Then, I placed the cut-out heart shape in the center of the plate. This acts as a ‘resist’ meaning that it resists the paint.

    hand placing a heart shape on painted gel press

    And finally, I placed a white piece of paper on the paint and pulled the image off the plate.

    hand pressing white paper on the paint

    Again, notice how the leftover paint from the first gel print is adding lots of extra texture to this print.

    (That is the reason why I prefer to not clean my gel plate too often!)

    hand holding textured paint background with a white heart

    Gel Print #3:

    This last print is again a two layer process using the homemade heart stencil. I wanted to play around with the edged paper to create designs in the paint.

    This time, I added a variety of red paints including bright red and a darker brick red color.

    Roll it with the brayer to spread out the paint and clean your brayer.

    hand adding drops of red paint

    Then, I created some squiggle lines with the edged card paper. This removed the red paint, revealing whatever color, if any, was left below.

    I also used one of the rubber stamps to add more designs.

    pulling wavy edged paper through red paint
    wavy lines etched into red paint

    Next, I placed the cardstock paper on the plate and again, pulled the first print.

    Paper printed red paint and wavy white lines and flower shapes

    Finally, I added blue, purple and gold paint to the middle of the gel plate, rolled it, applied the heart stencil and pulled the image.

    Paper printed red paint, white lines and flower shapes and a purple and gold heart
    three papers with textured backgrounds and heart shapes

    Turning your gel printed papers into Valentine greeting cards

    So, now you have your pretty gelli printed papers but how do you make them into Valentine’s cards? There are two ways you can do this.

    1. Using the X-Acto knife, ruler and cutting mat, you can cut your printed paper to size and fold it over to make the card.

    This can be any size you want. Standard card size is 4.5″ x 5.75″ but I have also made smaller, gift tag sized cards. Then you need to make some envelopes to go with your cards.

    2. You can cut your prints to size and glue them onto the blank cards. I like this method a little better because the finished cards look a bit more professional.

    Gel Printed Cards with heart shapes on a table with black background

    And just for fun … here is different method of gel printing greeting cards . . . Cut strips from a variety of prints and glue them together in a heart shape.

    Heart Valentine card made with strips of gelli printed papers

    How do you clean gel plates?

    I tried a bunch of different suggestions including hand sanitizer and dish soap. Honestly, the best way I have found to clean my Gel Plate is running very warm water over the plate and rubbing the paint off with my fingers.

    How do you store your gel plate?

    When I bought my gel plate, it was packaged inside a plastic ‘clamshell’ with some informational papers. I store my plate directly inside the plastic (without the papers).

    Is Gelli Printing the same thing as Gel Plate Printing?

    Yes! There is a brand of plate called ‘Gelli Arts’ Printing Plate which is why some artists refer to this printing technique as Gelli Printing. The actual method is the same regardless of the brand of plate you use.

    I hope you will give this fun printmaking technique a try. These unique papers are wonderful not just for Valentine cards but also for making homemade art journals, book covers, bookmarks and so much more.

    Enjoy!
    Annette

    Don’t miss these related crafts!

    • Valentine Crafts for Adults
    • Cute Handmade Valentine’s Day Cards
    • DIY Envelopes for Greeting cards
    • How to make Paper Bead Jewelry

    Gel Printing Cards for Valentines (Great Beginners Project!)

    Sharing is caring!

    69 shares
    • Share

    About Annette Browning

    Annette is a long time fiber artist and former alpaca farm owner. She shares her love of dyeing, felting, crochet and knitting as well as other craft projects.

    Primary Sidebar

    WELCOME! We share tutorials for Dyeing Yarn and Fabric, Natural Dyeing, Eco Printing, Felting, Knitting and Crochet Patterns as well as Crafts.

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

    Footer

    stay connected

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

    What’s New!

    two images of jars with dyes and dyed fabric
    image of fabric and yarn tie dyed with turmeric powder
    three jars of dye and a dyed fabric


    FELTING         DYEING         PATTERNS        CRAFTS         E-BOOKS         RESOURCES        ABOUT      DISCLOSURE      ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT        PRIVACY POLICY       


    As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.


    Affiliate Advertisements: This site participates in various Affiliate Programs. This simply means that if you click through an affiliate link and buy a product, we may get a small commission, at absolutely no extra cost to you.

    Copyright © 2022 FiberArtsy.com on the Brunch Pro Theme

    69 shares