Gelli Printed Valentine Decor

I don't do a lot of mixed media paper crafting, but Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate really intrigued me.  There seemed to be so many possibilities!  I got an idea in my brain for a gelli printed Valentine decor frame using the gelli plate and Pebbles Yours Truly.  Today, I want to share my finished product and the process I took to get there.  So here's my first foray into mono printing.

Here's a close up of the mono printed area.

I started by gathering any supplies I thought I would need. I ended up only using. the stencil on the right (Heidi Swapp Confetti). Another tool that I didn't use this time are the BrushStix you can see on the bottom right.  You can use them to draw your own design in the paint on the Gelli plate instead of using a stencil.  They are soft tipped, so they won't hurt your Gelli plate. 

I learned quickly that almost any acrylic paint works well except for Tim Holtz Distress paint.  The same qualities that make it react with water, make it bead up instead of rolling out nicely on the plate. As you can see in the photo below, it would probably make a cool background, but it was not the traditional mono printing technique I was looking for. 

So I switched to regular Ranger Adirondack paint.  You put a little paint on the on the Gelli plate and use a brayer or foam brush to spread it out. 

I placed the stencil on top of the paint covered plate, put a piece of paper on top of the stencil and pressed down over the whole paper to transfer the paint to the paper.  I turned the paper 180 degrees and pressed again (there was more than enough paint to do this twice without adding more paint to the plate). 

 After I did this layer, I wiped everything off with a baby wipe (water or gel hand sanitizer works too according to the people at Gelli Arts), and repeated the process with 2 more colors of paint.  The finished product is what you see below.

 I'm super happy with the finished product, and even tried out some different techniques and made some cards with the mono printing process (which I'll save to show you another time).  It was a very messy process, but lots of fun.  The final product really feels like my style even though I used a technique that's outside of what I'd usually consider my style.
Have you ever done any mono printing? I'd love to hear about it (or even see a picture!).