Behind the scenes of designing a new product (My full process)

From Gel Plate to Greeting Card: How a New Tucson Art Print Came to Life

There's something about having a loose plan and letting it go where it takes you.

That's the philosophy behind a recent design session in my studio — one that started as a simple gel plate printing experiment and ended with three new products heading to a local Tucson shop. If you sell handmade products, you know how rarely the process goes exactly as planned. This one was no different. And honestly? That's what made it worth documenting.

The Gel Plate Process (and Why It Keeps Surprising Me)

For those unfamiliar: gel plate printing involves painting in some form directly onto a gel (silicone) plate, pressing paper down, and pulling a print. Simple in concept. Wildly unpredictable in practice.

A few things I've learned that actually make a difference:

Distribute the paint before you press. On my first attempt, I rolled color directly onto the plate without spreading it first, and ended up with a blobby, uneven result. On my second pass, I took time to spread and blend the paint before pressing. The difference in how the painted blended was immediate.

Flip the plate, not the paper. Rather than placing paper on top of the painted plate, I flip the plate onto the paper. This is particularly helpful when you're layering multiple prints onto one painting. It gives me more control over placement and keeps the print from shifting.

Scan at every stage. This is one I can't stress enough. Gel plate prints can go from promising to overworked in a single layer. I scan after almost every pass so I never lose a version I loved.

Embrace the texture. That slightly rough, layered, imperfect surface? That is the product. I try to clean up obvious distractions later in Photoshop, but I'm careful not to over-correct. The beauty of a real painting is that it doesn't look like a digital print.

The Starting Point: Picacho Peak

The goal was straightforward enough: create a gel plate print of the Picacho Peak silhouette — that iconic mountain range just outside Tucson — to turn into a small art print for my shop.

I'd already pulled a handful of 6×6 paper backgrounds in advance, the kind of abstract, layered pieces that make gel plate printing so satisfying to work with. I also cut some stencils of the mountain silhouette — one for the south-facing view of the mountain (the way most Tucson locals would recognize it), one for the north view (the way people driving from Phoenix would see the mountain).

That's where the planning ended and the experimenting began.

Turning Paintings Into Products

At the end of my work session I had identified two favorites, and I started thinking about what product formats the might work best in:

• The mini art print — Our 4x4 miniprints have been selling well at a local Tucson shop, Why I Love Where I Live, and I wanted to add something Tucson-specific to their lineup so I selected the more colorful piece.
• The greeting card — I used the softer piece to create the greeting card. To finish it, I hand-painted "With Love From Tucson" with watercolor, using a graphite transfer technique, then scanned and composited the type into the final card design in Photoshop.
• The magnet — I have previously translated some of my mini prints to 2-inch magnets, and I realized since I already had the type painted, that this could work really well with these new paintings as well, and having a Tucson-specific magnet felt like a natural addition to the shop offering.

For the greeting card, I had to do a bit of creative problem-solving. The original painting was square (6×6), and A2 cards are taller than they are wide. I used Photoshop's cloning tools to extend the background just enough — the type covers most of that extended area anyway, so the original painting stays intact where it matters.

I also added a small moon element by copying a piece of a different painting into the lower right corner of the card. It's a tiny detail, but it added just the right touch of texture and complexity in a way I didn't anticipate when I was originally painting.

What Actually Shipped

All three products are now at Why I Love Where I Live in Tucson — the shop is getting them as a surprise, which felt like the right way to send them off.

I'm holding back a small number of the mini prints and magnets on my website for anyone who wants to order online. By the time you're reading this, they should be live.

The Bigger Takeaway

If you run a handmade product business, you've probably had sessions like this — where you set out to make one thing and walk away with three. The gel plate process in particular tends to reward that openness. You can't fully control it, which means you can't fully predict it either.

Plan loosely. Scan obsessively. And when something surprises you, pay attention — it might be the product you didn't know you were trying to make.