Who’s Ready for a Blog Hop and a Giveaway!?
Blog Hop Details
Thank you for joining our first Gel Press Blog Hop! We will have a challenge every month. This gives you the opportunity to play along AND win a Gel Press for yourself.
This month you can win an 8″ Round Gel Press Plate!!
Here’s how to win:
The Blog Hop Challenge
For this blog hop, we were asked to use the Gel Press 8″ Round plate to give YOU inspiration for our upcoming Earth Day Challenge.
As I sat down with my plate and paints I just started playing and once I got my first layer down…I knew were I wanted to go.
Here’s what I came up with:
As I made my print using my 8″ Round Gel Press Plate and thinking about Earth Day, I kind of thought “You know….this kind of looks like a girly world!” So…I ran with it!
Ingredients
For this project, I used:
Copy Paper
Fluid Acrylics
Spray Inks
Stencils
Brayer
First things first…here’s a quick tip!
I came across this AMAZING tip on a random You Tube Video for Golden Paints.
Before you start with your paints, lay your paper over your Gel Press Plate and using some low tack tape (like painter’s tape or washi tape), tack down one side.
Now you have a hinge that will allow you to place your mono-printed images in the exact same place every time without the guess work. This works EXCELLENT for shapes like the round plate to keep your images tight.
Here’s what your “homemade press” looks like open.
Let’s Do this…step by step tutorial!
Start with your fluid acrylics. Pick 1 color and then a white to add some POP. Remember, with Gel Press plates, a little bit of paint goes a long way.
Using your brayer, gently roll your paint over your plate. Then add some texture! I love this silicone potholder to add a great honeycomb texture.
Just look at the texture it adds!!
Flip your paper over and rub over the back. When you lift your paper, you will have your first image. This will become your background. It kind of looks like pink python print camo doesn’t it?!
Next, cover your entire plate with a black fluid acrylic.
For this step, I wanted my stencil design to be my image, so I laid my stencil over my fluid acrylics and lifted an image from there.
Lift your paper (and save it for another project!) and removed your stencil.
You’ll see you are left with a duplicate of your stencil image in paint. Flip your paper to add your stencil image to your base image. Here is where you can see how handy that hinge is! Your circles will be perfectly lined up without even trying. 🙂
Here is what my image looked like.
Next I wanted to add just a little bit of white, so I grabbed my white fluid acrylic, but I only added it to half of my plate. REMEMBER: You are printing mirror images, so since I wanted my white to end up on the RIGHT side of my finished image, I needed to put it on the LEFT side of my plate.
I layered a hexagon stencil on top and flipped my paper over to add the hexagons to my image.
My PRINT IS DONE!! 🙂
Help…I mono-printed…now what?
After making this FANTASTIC print, now I had to turn it into something.
I started by using Matte Medium to adhere my whole page to my canvas.
Using a cast off print, I cut the circle out to cover my image while I sprayed away with my Deco Art Shimmer Mists.
Once my inks were dry, I added more elements like White Shimmer spray for contrast, silver wax and stamped script.
For my letters, I didn’t have enough of one style to do my whole title, so I used a mixture (it’s a great way to use up old alphabets!)
They weren’t the right color, so I stuck them on a plastic folder and painted them white.
I added them to my canvas and made them POP with a little black outline and a little silver metallic paint.
DONE!!!
Time for your close-Up!
Here are a couple of close-ups!
Final Thoughts
I hope you have enjoyed this BRIGHT and funky project today for Gel Press.
I hope you will take the time to check out all of the blogs and enter for YOUR chance to win a 8″ Round Gel Press plate!
Until Next time,
XOXO,
KERI
Gel Press Creative Team
****All paints and inks by Deco Art, Inc and Deco Art Media. All Stencils from The Crafter’s Workshop***
I loved all the posts but favorite was cyndi “Stained Glass” project.
Very colourful. Great tip about making that hinge for the paper.
LOVE your prints and you have some great tips here too!
Great result.Thanks for the tip about the hinge for placement.
Awesome canvas!!
Beautiful project! Love it, thanks for sharing your beautiful art!~kim
Love this idea.
Wow i love all the details and layers you get!
Great! And you’ve sparked an idea….. thanks for the inspiration!
I love the different materials you used to create your project.
I love your project and your post!
Love what you did! VERY awesome
So very cool!
It’s so pretty!!!!
Love your creative project. Hopefully, I will be able to use your technique to make my own. Thank you.
So many layers! Great project.
Your print was just beautiful.
Gorgeous! Just love the colors and patterns! Great tip about hinging the paper. Thanks! God bless.
Loved reading about the hinge tech. with the masking tape!! Great prints.
all your ideas are different thanks for sharing
Very clever with the hinge on the paper ….. excellent hint. And your project turned out great. Thanks for the inspration.
What a beautiful idea of making a canvas!
thanks for the inspiration,
Wiebine
Wow, love this!
Hey! I’m also in the Tiare’s journal class lol Hello!! :oD
Thanks for the demo, I love it!
Love the idea of taping the paper! Thank you for that tip. Also for the lovely ideas in this post!
Great idea about using the hinge to line up the images!
This is great. Something I haven’t tried are the mists. Thanks for sharing this project.
Thanks so much!!!!
Thank you!
Many thanks, this website is really useful