Ah, finally! Even if you don't see them, I'm working on videos every single week, and am now working with others to make them awesome & amazing videos for their tutorials, too! So here's the gel plate tutorial I filmed a couple weeks ago!

I've learned so much and converted more than a handful of people with this fun, easy to use product! I'll be making another with 'advanced' techniques pretty soon, for those of you with your own plates who want to know more! I just....I have so much fun with my gel plates! It's so calming and medatative and full of all sorts of layers and possibilities!

If you want to see more of what I've created so far, check out my Gel Plate art gallery!

My lovely amazing friend Roben-Marie has ALSO posted her take on gel plates -- we scheduled our posts to go up together to give you all a Weekend of Gelli Arts!

Thanks to Gelli Arts for giving us the opertunity to play with this amazing product!

Welcome to my new series of DIY posts, Cheap & Easy. I want to share are all the little things I do that are cheap (or free!) and relatively easy for you to do in your creative life.

My dear friend Dina uses silhouettes in her artwork all the time. I'm captivated by her command of color and composition (and she has a book coming out next February , did you know that? I couldn't be prouder!), how she layers things around these ambiguous woman-shapes in order to express herself. She brings them to classes, and has a ready collection at her disposal.

So how do we begin to use them in our artwork?

Behold! The often-ignored-or-glared-at magazine ad!

I found the one below in an issue of 'Real Simple' grabbed at Half Price Books for a whopping $0.50. It's already paid for itself!

I cut her out, then traced her onto some Tyvek. Yes, Tyvek. The stuff you use to mail things. Need some? You might be able to find some at the post office (*wink*)

Using my craft knife, I cut her out!

Wanting to see how she performed, I did a quick-and-dirty two-layer monoprint with my gel plate.

First Layer: Color!

Second Layer: Paint w/ my new stencil on top!

All finished! Now that I know how awesome she looks, I'm sure to use her in my journal soon! Plus, I have a cool two-layer print to hang up on the wall.

For more gel plate fun, well...I'll be posting a nice, fun tutorial video this week!