Hope in a Box: Gel Press® Printing on 3-D objects

Good Morning Creatives!

Keri Sallee here and today I am sharing a recent project that I made for my favorite non-profit.

Four Years of Hope

For the last 4 years, I have had the honor of being the artist in residence for the yearly Mentor/Mentee Retreat for an organization called Saving Grace. You can read more about it on their website, but in short it offers support and transitional housing for girls ages 18-25 who: have aged out of foster care with nowhere to go, are homeless or have a home life that is not conducive to a good future. They offer mentors, life skills classes, educational support and so much more to girls who have been forgotten.

This year’s theme was “Coming out of the Darkness” and for each room, the organizers wanted a box that the girls and their mentors could leave notes of encouragement and hope for each other.

I was tasked with creating the boxes for each room and this is one of them.

Starting Place

All of the boxes were donated and were just simple paper mache boxes. So that my colors would be vibrant, I started with a layer of gesso on my box.

To have a lot of area to play with, I decided to use my 12 x 24 Gel Press Monoprinting Plate.

I’m a “dirty girl” when it comes to my Gel Press® plates…meaning I don’t always clean them off between prints. I like that the leftover bits give it the subsequent prints a distressed and unique look.

I also wanted to keep parts of my box white, so I masked it off with some old stickers and an generic bird shape that I cut from copy paper. To make sure it released easy and didn’t ruin my gesso, I stuck my bird to my box with a little washi tape.

Creating a Background on a 3-D Object

Starting with a large 12×12 stencil, I put down a layer of black Deco Art Fluid Acrylic.

My intent was to just add some visual interest and not have the entire stencil design transferred.

Next I added a layer of blues and greens and used my brayer to lay down a think layer on top. (my apologies…I forgot to take a picture before the next step!)

To add more textures, I placed a large sheet of bubble wrap over my entire plate and pressed down.

Next comes the fun part! Starting at one end and pressing your hand on the inside of your box, firmly roll your box over your plate. Once you’ve reached the end, line up your box again on the other end and repeat until you have covered your box to your liking.