Florence Turnour's Blog

Here is my project from  Creative Jumpstart , Day 9, inspired by Gwen Lafleur . This one is collaged gelli prints. Thanks for looking!

Day 10 of Creative Jumpstart was a lesson on Gelli printing by Annie O'Brien Gonzales . I'm a big fan of her work, and I have her book, so I had a flip though for additional inspiration before I got going.  I used a new stencil I just designed and my Gelli plate to make this. Some of it is collaged from Gelli prints on deli paper. I just bought some Posca paint pens (I blame Andrew Borloz), and used the yellow to draw on the flower. I was tempted to keep drawing all over it, but I thought the better of it. Thanks for looking!

Day 30 Day 31 Day 32 Day 33 Day 34: Gant Gator Graduates (1) Day 35: Taking a look at a Gator photo Day 36: Gant Gator Graduates (2) Day 37 Day 38: Emergency backup drawing for a day I was too lazy to put on my paint pants Day 39 I made a couple of them into buttons. I'm going to have to think "round" when I design the next few. I definitely need buttons of these.  My projects from these 10 days were inspired by Ed Emberley's collage work on books he wrote with his daughter. Thanks for looking!

I love making stencils, but stencil designs are limited in that they have to be one piece. For example you cannot have a stencil top print this shape because the inside white bits in the leaves would fall out. The white part, which is the stencil, is not one piece.  Stamps do not have this issue, but if you are cutting them out of foam, and gluing them down to make a stamp, lining up all the insides of the leaves, for example, would be tricky. Another option is to use a screen. Here is my first one. You can see the screen, taped to a cardboard frame in the top of the image, and some patterned paper I made with it at the bottom. I had the best results screen printing onto a Gelli plate, and printed from there onto paper. The screen suctioned itself onto the Gelli Plate, so there was very little leakage, and I could use the brayer to spread the paint, as there was no longer a need to push hard. I loved how it worked, so I made some more. These I mounted in mat boards, whi...

I took Julie Balzer's Make Your Own Junque Journal on-line class and made two journals. I loved this project.  It's so great to use up a bit of my huge stack of printed papers, and to find a home for some fairly finished artwork that I did as part of various on-line classes. For sure this is just the beginning of a new adventure in book binding for me. In the class, they encourage us to video a "Flip-through" of our journals to other participants. I made this little video showing off both books. Here are the on-line classes and teachers I mentioned in my video, in case you are interested in checking them out. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Make Your Own Junque Journal on-line class Carla Sonheim's Gelli Plate Plus Carla Sonheim's Cats Creative Jumpstart 2016  workshops from Birgit Koopsen Michelle Ward Julie Fei-Fan Balzer Dawn Woleslagle's Watercolor for Card Makers, Intermediate Techniques Thanks for looking!

Last week, in my continuing effort to squeeze as much art as possible in before school starts, I attended a two-day workshop with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer  at Studio CRESCENDOh  in Santa Ana.  In it I started two large collage paintings, one of which I finished today. Look how big it is! Goat! by Florence Turnour For this canvas, Julie directed us to draw a large half-face, but I decided I'd rather have a half goat face.  She reassured us that almost anything with a mouth and eyes will be recognizable as a face, but it occurred to me about a quarter of the way in that this was not necessarily true for goats.  I used a snapshot from my phone, and worried over the minimal drawing on my canvas for a while before diving in.  (I was finally spurred forward when Julie's mother, Eileen, passed by my table and said, "Oh, a goat." Sometimes even goats need validation.) I was super excited to learn how to glue.  Collage has always been one of my favorite med...

This worked so well, I wanted to share it with the Gelli Printing world. I was originally planning to do this with self adhesive foam letters that you can buy in bulk at Michael's, but I hated the font. Then I found these cork letters for $5, and they worked like a charm. First I put Velcro on the back of the letters I needed. I'll do the rest as I need them. Then I put the other half of the Velcro sticker on the back of an old Spellbinders packet (I compulsively keep packaging materials). I lined up my letters, and loaded my Gelli Plate with acrylic paint. Pressed the letters on the plate, and pulled them off. Now I had a plan to make the text quite subtle, so I printed pink on pink for my first print, and then I pulled the ghost print on white paper. The first one does not show up all that well because of my color choices. I also did a blue one blue. When I was putting things away, I noticed that the Velcro is a bit stronger than the cork, so you hav...

I made some new stencils to Gelli Print though. On this one, I drew on the print with black and white pen. I like the tree stencil, but I'm enjoying using the cut-out portion of it as a mask more. And last, here are some birds. I know many people use their Gelli Plate prints for collage, so this isn't revolutionary, but after printing with my stencils for a while, I notice that the masks look like they'd make great collage elements. Does anyone cut and then print on the little bits? Or does everyone print and then cut? I make my stencils from overhead projector slides. These are the masks Thanks for looking!

Inspired by a little trading rack at Studio 626 , in Corvallis, Oregon, I made some ATC's to trade. I didn't take a photo of the ones I traded there, but I was on a roll so I made some more. The background is a Gelli Plate print on multimedia paper, and drawings are done in ink, and colored with Prismacolor colored pencil. Thanks for looking! Mean Fish and Barn Mean Fish and Barn (front) Mean Fish and Barn (back) Lip Fish and Orchid Lip Fish and Orchid (front) Lip Fish and Orchid (back)

This is a practice gelli print that I made when my mother was here. Off and on we talk about collaborating on a project in which I provide window fabric and she sews it into something wonderful. This print is on deil paper. I drew on the print with a thin liner, and then added color with colored pencils. High rise  This image was inspired by the children's book, The Curious Garden, by Peter Brown . Thanks for looking.

I did some Gelli prints last night, combining three ideas. Two were techniques for the background of a print, and the third was to ghost print a piece of origami. Experiment #1: Making a stamp from interfacing I saw this blog post , about making a stamp of sorts out of fusible interfacing, on the Gelli Plate blog, and thought I'd give it a try. I fussy cut heavy, double-sided, fusible stabilizer to make some background stamps with flowers and leaves. Interfacing, fussy cut and ready to iron Some prints and the used interfacing stamp I print on mixed-media paper and on deli paper. Today, I spent a lovely afternoon at the Art Lounge putting my more successful efforts into my art journal. The white of the journal page made the leaves pop through the somewhat translucent deli paper. ORANGE! and leafy in my art journal Do you have tips for gluing deli paper down without wrinkles?  I used gel medium, putting it on the book and then applying the deli paper. The de...