Way back in June, I took a Gelli Plate Printmaking class from Celeste Douville at the Schack Art Center. It was a great afternoon of playing with paper, paint, stencils, and textures to create monoprints using a "gelli plate", which was new to me. I left motivated and imagining all the gelli printing I would be doing....

And, then I remembered I have a 3-year old, work part-time, and usually a million other things around the house that need to be done, so the my gelli plate went untouched for quite a while.

But, I was determined to get it out and try creating some prints for Christmas. My love of Christmas projects helped me carve out a few hours here and there to play. (I mean really, this is about the only time of year I get super motivated and have consistent blog entries. Maybe this blog should just be about Christmast projects...)

These were some of the "finished" printed papers. I didn't love how everything turned out, but it was a fun experiment and there were enough winners to work with.

I used some of the prints to make Christmas cards, which became an involved process of cutting, arranging, gluing, sewing, and more gluing. Mid-way through the process I asked my husband, Jeff, to remind me NOT to make my own Christmas cards next year. (Of course, come mid-November 2015 I will promptly dismiss any attempts by Jeff to stop me from making my own Christmas cards.)

Here are a few of my favorite cards... Can you tell I became a little obsessed with bubble wrap?
I also used a few sheets to create these paper balls, which I found on page 23 in the book "Handmade Scandinavian Christmas".  I found that the stiffer/thicker paper worked best for these, my music paper prints didn't hold the ball shape as well.

Merry Christmas!