You might be wondering why I have a post about gel window clings. Well if you’ve read my blog or visited my instagram, you know I’m interested in printing with trash and weird stuff. I had a moment of genius where I realized that gel window clings are made of similar if not the same stuff as gelli plates.

You know the things I’m talking about- those dollar store holiday themed window decorations that pop up in offices and classrooms every holiday season. Those gummy decorations that for halloween are shaped like skulls, stars, cats, jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween themed icons. I believe I’ve also seen them for other holidays in offices and other places. It took some searching- they were no longer carried by my local dollar stores or even the pop up Spirit of Halloween near me. Instead I found a set in CVS. Mine cost $4. They have gone up in price. They are also available on Amazon.

Once you have your gel window clings you’ll notice a few things- they are MUCH thinner than even mini and small gelli plates and they are MUCH softer and squishier. This is fine, you’ll need a gentle touch when printing.

I attached mine to an acrylic stamping block, but they can easily adhere to any smooth non-porous surface like plexiglass.

Once attached I rolled them up like any gelli plate- dab a bit of paint on, then roll the paint out. I also rolled into onto a slab then rolled it onto the gel cling. Both worked equally as well.

A thin even coat is key to getting a good print. I found that placing the block and gel cling then flipping the paper over and using my hand worked best. After I determined they would print well. I cut my sticker paper to sized and dropped the paper onto the plate, in the usual gelli printing manner.

I printed white skully images onto sticker paper to make skully stickers. I also did some black cats and loads of stars.

Overall this process was a lot of fun, and really interesting. The prints came out great and makes me wonder about other themed gel clings- I founds summer, ocean, letter, dinosaur, fall, thanksgiving, and christmas sets. The letters pose an interesting option for hiding additional meaning in a print or for creating a printing poetry.

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Fall is upon us, the days are shorter and mornings crisp, which means it’s time for pumpkin spice and more gelatin or gelli printmaking! For ease of writing I’m going to refer to this printing method as gelatin printing throughout this post. I’ve put the supplies I need for a printing session into a small (ish tote) so I can set it up to print away while watching TV. Though often I find myself not watching the TV and just focusing on making prints.

I set a goal to get 10 or so good base prints to work on in additional sessions or methods. 

So this brings up the idea of what IS a GOOD gelatin print, or base print? And are they the same thing?

The short answer is that no they aren’t always the same thing and the long answer is, it varies depending on what you want to use the prints for. So gelatin printing is a form of monoprinting and can absolutely be used to create wonderful images on its own, but if you want to do that, you’ll likely need to use Akua inks for their longer open time or amend acrylic paints for a longer open time with airbrush medium or something to extend their open time. Though I’ve seen a few YouTube videos of artists using layers of acrylic paint to create amazing landscapes with a gelatin/gelli plate.

For me, I have 2 types of gelatin prints- those I want to make more art on with other tools and those that I want as a finished piece on its own.

In both I look for layers of color through stencils and paint manipulation to create texture. YOu can see that in the images below. Each has several layers of stencils built up through the gelatin plate that creates depth and interest.

For sheets that I plan to turn into their own individual pieces of art, I look for specific colors I can use as the background. Colors that pop with texture and layered meaning. In most cases I look for specific colors that I can use to make the final image pop.

For sheets that I plan on using as a backdrop with other media, I look for the same things- layers of color that create interest. I really like to have color opposites over analogous colors. I’m particularly fond of yellow, magenta and orange together with teals and blues over the top. I like these layers behind deeply black and opaque white ink.

I think a GOOD gelatin print session is one where I am able to get a bunch of different colors on a bunch of sheets that create visual interest. A good print is as individual as the printer.

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The U.S.A. Gold pencil has changed ownership so much I’ve lost track of ownership, luckily for me RoseArt has their name discreetly slapped on the back of the packages. For awhile I couldn’t find them on shelves at my various big box stores. This year I found this pack of 20 pencils at Staples for $3.99. Pretty pricey if you ask me.

The packaging is as maximalist as they come. A plastic (UGH) bubble glued to a piece of card with some die cutting. The front of this hanger package features a red, white, blue, gold, AND green design. The package is hard to read and the U.S.A. Gold logo is lost in the mishmash of crap on the packaging. There’s a bit of a flag motif, except one stripe is red and the other is blue. Oh, yes, don’t forget the handful of stars.

Jeebus crisco, why not just add a crying eagle, RoseArt?

The flip side of the package? Moar flags and stars.

There are some changes to the 2021 version of this pencil, and frankly… Most kinda are crap.

The pencils look pretty similar to the older version- possibly cedar, gold ferrule with a blue band, jaunty little pink eraser and a slim feeling in the hand.

The changes are a glossier coating, gotta get in that no name microban antimicrobial nonsense to capitalize on covid fears. Never mind the antibacterial properties of wood are well documented, and cedar itself is rot and fungal resistant (though it absolutely will rot.) The claims emblazoned on the USA Gold packaging doesn’t say or even suggest that the pencils will kill covid viruses, but one must assume that harried parents rushing through Some Box Store with a passel of cranky kinds might just toss a package of these into the cart, without investigating the claims, or believing the product will help little Johnny in the fight against covid. Do you really want little Johnny sampling some of that sweet no name microban knockoff as he chews his pencil?
Enough on that.

The true crime here is that RoseArt dropped the stellar blue foil imprint, thus further ruining the look of the pencils. We now have a glossy pencil with a GOLD FOIL imprint. GAH.

Hideous.

The cores are dark and smoother than the original Write Dudes pencil. Still I cannot recommend this pencil to you. For so many reasons. The awful maximalist packaging, the glossy “antimicrobial” finish, the GOLD foil imprint, it’s all just so wrong. They ruined a really decent pencil.

In a hilarious twist, RoseArt forgot to update the website for this product… So the website mentioned on their own packaging leads to a dead page. LOL.

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I didn’t think I was going to make it into Walmart this year, and frankly I wish I hadn’t. That’s a whole other story. When I did finally make it to Wally World, well, it was nearly empty of school supplies. Generally this Walmart has a lot of stuff left over and has clearance shopping carts full of pencils and other items for 10 cents. Not this year. The school supplies looked as though they had done minimal ordering and what was left the week before school was not a lot.

Mostly they had a great deal of Norwood poly covered composition books. Which I didn’t purchase due to their paper being ideal for pencils, ballpoint, and okay with gel, but abysmal for fountain pen. Plus, that poly cover was against the rules for this year’s round up. I did some searching, and digging and walking into the regular office and stationery section of the store to find the only box of card covered college ruled composition notebooks.

This is less a round up and merely a single review.

Pen + Gear Marbled Composition Notebook

At a mere 50 cents these are on par with the cheapest pricing I found this year. At 100 sheets they are among the fatter composition notebooks. The marbling has a good visual balance of dark to light and the spine tape is perfectly proportioned. The branding is a tad large and not well integrated into the front label area, but not awful. The barcode area on the back is okay as well.

The cover is abysmally thin. The whole book is floppy. This is the first time I’ve wondered if a cover will actually hold up to regular use in a bag. I like a thick card cover but I’m okay with a thin cover IF I think it will hold up. I question this one. It’s that floppy and thin. If it catches on anything in a bag it will fold and crease. This might be a good excuse to get a nice cover for your comp books. Etsy is filled with them.

Inside the 100 sheets are smooth but toothy to the touch, letting me know without even testing this paper will be killer with pencil. And it was. I tested with a few pencils and they all performed really well. This paper feels as good with pencil as the Yoobi paper, if a touch smoother. It takes little effort to get a dark even line, pencil glides over the surface. Ballpoint does great as does gel ink.

Please note the spot of bleed through on the facing page. No good.

Things started to go downhill when I pulled out the fountain pens. Every nib showed some ink spread and the barest hint of feathering. The pens felt good on the page. Flipping the page showed a great deal of bleed on every nib except EF with well behaved inks. This is a composition notebook for pencils, ballpoint, and gel pens. While a fountain pen can be used, you’d be stuck using one side of the page only. Which, admittedly, is how I use a comp book, but I like to be able to use the verso of each page for notes on the facing page. I wish I were able to suggest this as a good comp book, but it just isn’t.

You are much better off looking for other brands at Target or other places. Wally World’s composition notebooks are a bust this year.

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Staples has often had composition notebooks that were stellar for fountain pens at 50 cents each. In years past you looked for those marked “Made in Brasil.” This year I looked through the stacks and stacks of books and found only “Made in Egypt.” In keeping with my usual purchases I only bought college ruled. This year I also stuck to card covers only. No poly covers. Though the Staples closest to me had many poly covers, they were $1 each. 

Staples has also changed up their branding on their store brand items. Nothing is marked “Staples;” it is now TruRed. Why? Who knows. Personally, I liked Staples branding with the single partially bent staple as an icon. The True Red branding leaves me a bit flat…Though I do like the dual open staples on each side.

Both comp books purchased at Staples are TruRed Brand and feature the same flimsy thin cardstock cover printed with wide blotchy marbling. The covers are too thin for writing out of hand. The taped spine is spot on and perfectly proportioned to the notebook. The covers were available in blue, purple, red, and black. All spine tapes were black.

TruRed Graph Ruled

These cost $1.29 and have 80 sheets of graph paper.

The stitching is wide but tightly done and feels secure. All the paper inside is tight and even in the center is perfectly folded.

The ruling is pale blue and 1/4inch, relatively wide for graph paper and my least favorite graph ruling. It is good for writing and bullet journaling. The paper is what I call “composition book thin” and is probably 15lb. It is smooth to the touch but has decent tooth for pencils. Fountain pens feel good on the surface but you won’t be confusing this with Tomoe River paper. Even wide wet pens don’t quite glide over the surface. They feel good, but not great.

The same, good but not great, goes for the performance of the paper as well. Because the paper is so thin there is plenty of show through, but no bleed through. Even a wide wet brush pen didn’t exhibit much in the way of bleed through. Further, there’s no feathering to be seen and just a bare hint of sheen.

These do not perform as well as a Unison graph from Target and at $1.29 they are a lesser value. But in a pinch you can get them at Staples at $1.29 year round. Well that is if you can find them on the shelf.

TruRed College Ruled

These are regularly $0.99 each and currently on sale for 50 cents. There is a purchase limit of 30 at 50 cents.

These feature the same tight well done binding as the graph paper. A little too widely stitched but satisfactorily done. I’ve purchased Staples branded comps in the past with terrible binding. This year’s offerings seemed to be all very well done. 

These books sport 100 sheets or 200 pages. The pages are roughly 15 pound, which is standard for composition notebooks. The paper feels smooth but not slick and fountain pens feel good on the page. Again they don’t glide but feel pretty nice. The paper doesn’t exhibit any feathering even with the wettest of my pens and brush pens. Though with the brush pen there is a tiny amount of bleed through at the wettest points. The ink shows a tiny amount of sheen.

Pencils feel pretty good on this paper too. It’s toothy but not sandpaper toothy. Points hold up pretty well but the line even from an HB is decently dark.

Overall if you are looking to stock up on a composition notebook this isn’t a bad choice. The paper feels very nice with most of my pens and pencils. It’s got 100 sheets and is stitched well. The major downside is the flimsy cover. Which will stand up relatively well in a bag, it just won’t allow for out of hand writing. I’m not sure you can get much better than this for 50 cents.

Staples seemed to have far fewer offerings than in the past. I wasn’t able to find other brands of comp books on the shelves or in their more decorative sections of back to school supplies. Overall the BTSS section was pretty disappointing and lacked the vigor found in previous years. Though, can anyone be surprised given last year and the questions many might have about this upcoming school year? After all, is BTS back to school or back to school at home? What does back to school even mean this year?

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