Gelli plate experiments

As part of the DecoArt Media Team and collaboration with Gelli Arts I have been playing with gelli plates and the Premium Acrylic Paints.

I am not a complete newbie to the gelli plate and have played on numerous occasions to get some background prints to use in my journals but I've never really thought through developing a process of steps I could follow again. So I scoured Pinterest and Youtube and found some fabulous videos by Alice-ART. After watching several of her videos I thought I'd try and work out some steps to work with - you'll see it didn't completely work!!!

Gather supplies and choose your paint palette. Gelli Art kindly sponsored the plate and brayer for the DecoArt Media Team members so this is some playtime before I got going with my July project.

Pick fresh grasses and leaves.

Choose some flower die cuts

.

Use the phthalo turquoise and sap green, brayer roughly and quite thickly over the gelli plate and pull a print. Repeat with another clean piece of paper and pull again just to clean off the gelli plate.

Brayer over a thick layer of lighter green , blue, cream and white.

Lay on the natural foliage and pull a print with one of the dark backgrounds. 

Leave the leaves in position and brayer over some cream, magenta and yellow. 

Remove the leaves and replace with the flower die-cuts.

Take the second piece of the dark green original print and pull another print from the layers and colours you just added. You'll see slightly different photos here as I repeated the process a second time to get more images to show you.

My die-cuts kinda stuck to the paper the first time I did it so I had to pull them off and some stayed behind. So you know what they say 'embrace your imperfections' but actually from a mixed media point of view I really like this.

Sadly the dark green flowers didn't work for me so I'll have to rethink my steps.

I have a collection of other prints I took with spare pieces of paper along the way. What I really love are the backgrounds that appeared. You'll probably see more of those coming soon.

Have you noticed I didn't use the leaves? I also had a little play with them too.

xxx

Faux gold leaf? - Metals for A Vintage Journey

It's the first Friday in July and the start of a new challenge at A Vintage Journey.

This month we would like to see some kind of precious metal feature in your project. Think gold, silver, brass, copper, aluminium or steel. It could be in the form of embellishments, cardstock, paint, gilding wax, foil, gold leaf, rub ons, or paints. Just remember to ensure that you create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby,mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

For this month's challenge I have created a 5 x 7 inch journal panel and kept the focus with metallics in any way I could.

 For the background I used heavyweight watercolour paper and cut my background piece and laid it an arrow die on the flat side to take the impression but not cut it. I then dribbled, spritzed and dried some areas of prussian blue, turquoise interference, and emperor's gold before blending quinacridone gold mainly around the edges. To finish I brayered emperors gold over the whole piece - it got picked up on the raised areas and looks somewhat like faux gold leaf.

 I kept the embellishing simple as I didn't want to hide much of that opulent background. The globe was die-cut from gold crd and I used Andy Skinner's satin sunset and crystal glaze embossing powders on it.

The metal pieces were all altered with dazzling metallic paints with some gesso and burnt umber media fluid acrylic.

I think the lovely lady looks as though she has embarked on a cruise adventure. I wonder who she is with and where she is going?

I hope you have a little time to pop over to see what the other Creative Guides have created for the line up and maybe you will get a chance to make something yourself for Amanda's great challenge.

Supplies from Country View Crafts

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - prussian blue hue, quinacridone gold, interference turquoise, burnt umber

DecoArt Dazzling Metallics - emperor's gold, pewter, ice blue
Andy Skinner embossing powders - crystal glaze, satin sunset

Deep Sea Fishing - Mixed Media Board with clay - Andy Skinner Creative Team

I am still having fun with some new Andy Skinner products and today I am sharing this media board on Andy's blog.

Process steps

Take a piece of greyboard and cut to size. Firstly layer gesso with a palette knife - dry and repeat round the edges with white crackle paste. Again leave to dry.

Blend layers of blues and browns media fluid acrylics until you are happy with the background. I kept it fairly light at this stage with ideas of stencil textures and dripped inks through it. 

I rollered out some clay and stamped it with the 'Dem Bones' fish stamp several times and dried with a heat gun.

After giving them two coats of gesso I painted and spritzed water over until I was happy with a mottled background and then gently rubbed titanium white over the raised areas with my finger.

The seabed is made up of coloured up cheesecloth and ....

.... die cuts roughly painted and just left as they are.

As I was laying out the design I still wanted to add some text or texture in the background but my brain was also saying no that would look too busy. So as they say know when to give up before you over do it! So I left it apart from some simple splatters of paint ....

.... until everything was glued on and I just couldn't resist adding some prussian blue drippage under the fish.

For a change this worked out similar to how I wanted it to. I was originally thinking about fossil displays but I'm really quite happy with this.

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

DecoArt Media white gesso, white crackle paste, matte medium

DecoArt media fluid acrylics - cerulean blue, prussian blue hue, sap green, burnt umber, translucent white, titanium white, raw umber, dark rey V6, titan buff

Andy Skinner stencil - Inspire

Andy Skinner stamps - Dem Bones
Archival inks - coffee, watering can, olive

Spray paints or inks - Tando Creative

I've made a tag for this theme today at Tando Creative.

I used a media board painted with gesso and when dry scraped white modeling paste through a stencil.

These pieces I took from a bits box which were already painted - leftovers from previous projects.

I also grabbed these from another bits box of Tando leftovers to add to the design. As you can see these were not painted or sealed so I started by gluing these to the media board ...

.... and when dry I gave it all a coat of gesso.

Next I sprayed some water based and DecoArt white mister over the surface, dried it and repeated again to give me my base  colours ...

.... and then dribbled some watery media acrylic paints, ....

.... sanded and inked the edges of the board and finished with some splatters of titanium white.

Because the sprays I used were water based they created some lovely mottled effects together when I spritzed them and when I repeated the layer. 

xxx

Supplies from Tando Creative

Media board, chipboards.

Andy Skinner stamps and stencils

DecoArt Media gesso, misters

The circus has come to town - mixed media - Andy Skinner

Use up your leftovers.

Do you have boxes and tubs of left over bits and pieces? I try to only keep bits that I think will be really useful but they still take up space so I am challenging myself to use up more of them.

Floorboards found in my left overs box so I just tore it to size (5 x 7 inches).

Red card also from the leftovers box and it looks like it had some gesso scraped over before being painted red; I mixed some white gesso and burnt umber media fluid acrylic and brayered onto the enigma stamp to get the background - I love this stamp.

The circus advert was stamped onto some card dipped in a watery wash (also another leftover) ........

..... and I found this image that I'd printed out some time ago and thought that this fabulous character looked perfect to fit in with the theme.

The bunting was made with - yes you've guessed it left over brayered card - it had been brayered with bright red paint, so I layered up with watery washes, stencilled circles and white splatters before cutting it into triangles. I also punched a star from the red bayered card.

I found the little ticket as an image Free on the Graphics Fairy website and the Big Top sign.

I used a couple of the eye chart transfers from the 'alchemy plus' set

I love how it came together and it has joined the panel I made last week in my new black visual journal.

I am sharing this over on Andy's blog today as well.

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

Andy Skinner stamps, stencils, transfers

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics and Mediums