Botanicals are wonderful printing tools, and a big plus is that they are mostly for free! You can just go outside, find some foliage, or pick some flowers and you are ready to go. You can also use the last nice flower from a whitened bouquet before you throw it out. And if you want flowers that you can use over and over again, then have a look at the artificial flower section of the dollar store.
In this blog post, Birgit is sharing her favorite botanical printing reels, along with a video from last year in which she shows tips and tricks to create the most beautiful flower prints!
#1 Golden leaves on black paper!
A simple print with a striking effect!
TIP: Make sure the layer of gold paint is really thin. This will make it easier to remove the paint from the areas around the leaves and will result in a clean print.
#2: Frottage with leaves! Frottage is a French word that means “rubbing”. It’s a technique where you place a textured object underneath a sheet of paper and then rub over the paper using a pencil, crayon or charcoal.
In this reel, Birgit is using a wax crayon to rub over some leaves. The wax will create a resist layer for the acrylic paint on the plate which allows you to create a resist print.
TIP: You can do this with any color crayon – the crayon color will not affect the color of the print-that will be the color of the paint you choose for the first layer. But, if you give it a little bit of thought, you might pick a specific color, clean off the rubbing after printing and use the rubbing in your art too 😉
#3: Artificial Flowers! The benefit of using artificial flowers and leaves is that you can use them over and over again!
In this reel, Birgit colored the flowers using acrylic paint and a brush. Of course you can use a variety of sizes of flowers and different colors for each flower if you like.
TIP: Dab off the paint from the flower in between stamping on the plate. The less paint there is on the flower, the more it will pick up from the plate and give you crisper images.
#4: Combining flowers with textures.
Of course you are not limited to using only botanicals in your print. You can use them with any other texture you fancy.
Here, Birgit used some pieces of corrugated cardboard combined with a flower.
In this print Birgit used PanPastel instead of acrylic paint to color the flowers. PanPastels are easy to blend and give a softer look than acrylics. If you don’t have PanPastels at hand, you might want to try eyeshadow instead!
Here a real flower was used. If you have to buy flowers it might be too expensive and maybe feel like a waste using them for gel printing. But often when you have a bouquet of flowers that’s withered there is at least one or two flowers that are still good enough to work with. They are your sign to do some flower printing!
#5: Tips and tricks for great flower prints
A year ago Birgit created a blog post in which she shared a bunch of tips and tricks on how to create amazing flower prints.
Any questions that might have come up with the previous reels will probably be answered in this video… so be sure to check it out:
Read entire Blog Post here: https://gelliartsblog.com/2025/05/15/gelli-arts-gel-printing-with-artificial-flowers-by-birgit-koopsen/
#6: Three ways of printing with Leaves
Last but not least, there is this blog post from 6 years ago (but still relevant) showing 3 ways of printing with leaves!
Read entire Blog Post here: https://gelliartsblog.com/2017/11/17/gelli-arts-printing-with-leaves-3-ways/
We hope you will have fun creating your own botanical prints and we would love to see them! Don’t forget to tag us when sharing them on social media @gelliarts & @birgit_koopsen!
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