Doesn’t press-free sound more positive than press-less, as if I’m happy not to be encumbered with such a useless item? It does give me an opportunity to experiment. After abandoning the walking press I mentioned in the last post, I turned to Gelli prints and then, laden with leaves and flowers from my garden and a new stainless steel rolling pin, to rolling out prints with a lot of pressure. I also went back into some prints, inking the leaves and flowers and applying right onto the paper.

I placed a few flowers after inking the Gelli plate. The flowers are removed before printing, leaving an impression in the acrylic paint.

The geranium print I showed in the last post, now over-printed with leaves and flowers directly onto the print. I rolled over the leaves with the rolling pin.

I inked a Styrene plate with block printing ink and placed a Queen Anne’s lace directly on top. I used the rolling pin to print. The process left a disappointing big white blob on the paper, so I applied paint to the flower and reprinted, then added leaves from another type of flower.

I then printed the “ghost,” or second print, after removing leaves. They leave a nice pattern on the inked plate. However, it was very faint, so I reinked the plate with a greener version of the background color, wiped out the area where the flower would appear, and reprinted. Fairly satisfactory.