Gelatine plate mono-printing

I have just started reading a great simple printmaking book by Elizabeth Harbour.

One of the techniques she describes is using a gelatine printing surface (jelly printing surface).

It involves making a printing surface with powdered gelatine.
I was intrigued by this method of mono printing and decided to give it a go because beautiful prints can be made using flowers and leaves.

I scaled down the quantities stated in the book to make a small thinner block to try it out.

Here is the jelly plate when the gelatine had set.

I planned to use acrylic paint but didn't have the acrylic retarder which slows down the acrylic paint drying to allow the print to be made. It doesn't work without it 

The kids went into the garden and picked buttercups and grass, then I applied the acrylic to the gel plate and they placed the plants on the plate.

After making the silhouette print which is absorb off the background paint, we quickly removed the flowers ready to make the ghost print.

Unsurprisingly the acrylic had dried and stuck in patches to the newspaper we were using to do the silhouette print.  Not wanting to disappoint the kids, I explained that I needed to add something to the acrylic first but didn't have any but that we could try with watercolor paints to get and idea of what the print might have looked like.

I applied some green watercolor over the acrylic and the kids placed the plants on top.

We made a print and then I added a bit of blue paint and we did another layout.

The prints came out like this

The 3 print attempts with watercolor on the gelatine plate. It looks like a promising method and we are looking forward to trying it again when I get some acrylic retarder.