Tag Technique 3: Using Pigment inks on a gelli plate

Hi everyone,
Have you tried any of these techniques yet? My third and final post using pigment ink pads on the gelli plate is also my favourite. It is inspired by the tags created by the uber-talented Birgit Koopsen. She has produced many videos for Gel Press and are easy to find on YouTube.

Pretty, aren't they? First, I used the VersaFine Clair ink pads that I used in my previous posts, but I didn't get a great result. I think the pads are too new and tended to bubble as they dried. The Distress Oxides were a lot more successful and were used in the samples above. 

As you can probably make out in this photo, I smeared each ink pad across the gelli plate. Take care not to let the colours touch as you can contaminate the ink pad. Best to use a small brayer afterwards to carefully blend the colours together while keeping each colour discrete. You now need to let these dry. 

When I used the VersaFine Clair pigment inks, I blocked the colours. Another idea Birgit Koopsen used. However, you can see it starting to 'bead' on the gelli plate. I suspect the ink pads were just too juicy as they were mostly new. 

I used several of my Carabelle art texture printing plates and pressed them into the ink to create patterns across the plate. I then placed a few tags across different parts of the gelli plate to pick up the print. However, I was disappointed with the result.

So, I tried again with the Distress Oxides. I used the art printing plates again followed by the foam stamps again.

This time when I pulled some prints off with my tags it worked beautifully as you can see from the first photo. I do hope you will have a go with this particular technique. It is so rewarding! Thankyou Birgit for another cracking idea! Until next week, happy crafting! 

Tag Taechnique 2: Pigment inks on the gelli plate

Hi everyone! I have had a couple of extended crafty sessions over the last couple of days playing around with different pigment ink pads and acrylic paints on the Gelli plate. Tonight's techniques follow on from the previous technique using Shaving foam (see previous post if you missed it). I do hope you will have as much fun as I have had playing around with these different mediums.

I have briefly explained a simple technique on the main group page for Mini Marvels. This involves stamping directly onto the gelli plate with a pigment ink pad. I used VersaFine Clair ink pads. The trick is to allow this to dry sufficiently before brayering a light coloured acrylic paint over the top of the stamped image and then pulling a print off.  Here is another sample of this first, simple technique. It does make lovely backgrounds when you use different colours.

Using a much larger gelli plate I then tried stamping onto acrylic paint with the pigment ink pads and adding several layers before pulling a print. It gives a much more detailed background which I love.

I started by choosing several acrylic paint colours - I used Dina Wakely paints by Ranger -  and brayered them across my Gelli plate. The next step was to layer some stencils across the paint and pull off a print leaving the stencils in place. I then removed the stencils and allowed this to dry. 

Once dry, I added more paints and brayered a couple of different colours sparingly in different places on the gelli plate. Then,  I took some Claudine Helmuth foam stamps and stamped into the wet paint and left this to dry. You do need to be patient between layers. 

Once the stamped images were dry, I overstamped again, but this time using the Pigment ink pads. And again, I let this dry. Don't be tempted to use a heat gun. It dries the gelli plate too fiercely. 

Here I've used a couple of Indigo Blu dinkie stamps and one of Kate Crane's stamps from one of her Carabelle stamp sets. The next step, once these images have dried, is to lightly paint over the whole thing with a light coloured paint. I use either White, light/pale pink or blue. All work well for this technique. I got this idea from a class with the lovely Kate Crane. 

As you can see I have brayered a very thin layer of paint across the plate. You can still see the pigment stamped images through it. I then quickly pulled my print. It wasn't perfect, but I love the distressed result. I even managed another print! 

This now ready for die-cutting a couple of tags from or I might use this one for ATCs. I hope you'll have a go at this technique too, although there is a lot of waiting around for the layers to dry. Have a look at You Tube for more ideas. This is mainly where I got my ideas from. I will post another technique tomorrow using pigment ink pads on the gelli plate. I hope you can drop by! 

Mini Marvels:Tag Techniques 1

Hi everyone. Thankyou so much for joining me over here for a visual journey through the first technique. Fortunately, and probably because, I recently showed this technique to one of my Grandfairies who just loves creating art and thought what fun it would be to show her a variety of art techniques to help relax her while preparing for and during her fast approaching SAT tests. Not a big leap then to suggesting this for a new challenge in my Mini Marvels group. I love learning new techniques and revisiting old ones! I was reaquainted with this technique during a recent class with the uber-talented and very lovely, Tracy Evans. I hope you enjoy it too.

For this technique you will need:
-shaving foam (not gel),
-a tin foil dish to squirt the shaving foam into,
-card stock or ready made Tags
-either paints,food colouring or reinkers - I've used Distress dye ink reinkers with my granddaughter here,(Tracy used the Distress Oxides reinkers) -
-a ruler,
-a heat gun.

1. The Shaving Foam technique

I am cutting my own tags, using PaperArtsy 340gms Smoothy card stock. I love this card and generally use it for all of my mixed media techniques, but you use your own preferred card. Just ensure it will withstand wet media. I cut 12 tags using Ranger's Tim Holtz Thinlets Tag dies. I've used the largest one for mine. However, there is no rule as to which size tag you should make. Circle tags would be fun too. Now for the fun part. Hopefully the photos will do a lot of the explaining!

I

Having squirted a really good amount of shaving foam into the foil dish, add drops of either paint, food colouring or reinkers onto the surface of the shaving foam. Add as many colours as you like. Now, using a cocktail stick or coffee stirrer, mix through the colours carefully making swirling patterns.

As Imogen has done here, lay your tag onto the surface of the swirly coloured foam and press it down quite firmly to allow it to absorb the colours you have added. It's a bit messy but smells heavenly! 

Gently lift the tag from the foam surface. It will pull up a lot of the foam with it but not to worry. Lay this gloopy tag down on your surface and then take a ruler to slide all of the foam completely off the card. You can discard this foam or pop it to one side to use it again later. You should still have plenty left in your foil dish. 

Imogen is demonstrating this step beautifully isn't she? You really should gasp at the resulting pattern you will see left on your tag. The next step is to use your heat tool to gently waft over the tag. The colours will appear a little brighter depending on which colour agent you use. This didn't happen when I used PaperArtsy Fresco chalk paints but the colours definitely brightened when I used the Distress Oxides reinkers. You will also need to use a paper towel after drying to thoroughly remove any oily residue from the Oxides. Make as many tags, using various colours to vary the backgrounds you create, as you like. Play around with different media! 

And this was what Imogen made with her backgrounds! 

What will you do with yours? Have fun and post your results on the group page! Until next week for Technique 2! Bye for now. 

Artist Trading Coins PaperArtsy style

Hi there folks, I'm linking this post to the one going out tonight over on the paperartsy blog here. The blog theme over the past week and continuing throughout next week is: Artist Trading Coins. These are the ones I made using a couple of Kay Carley's stamp sets.

The two stamp sets Ive used are: EKC15 and EK19. These flower heads are great images to use on the 2.5" diameter Coins. If you haven't yet caught the 'bug' for making these little mini art pieces, then I hope you can find inspiration and know-how on the PA blog. Each contributing artist has a different 'take' on how to create these while using various stamped images from different designers. The technique is pretty much the same as making regular ATCs. My technique is the way I produce any piece of art journaling - lots of layers! 

These backgrounds were created by first laying down a mix of Distress Oxides, adding various colours until I was happy with the result. These three sheets are a result of using different combinations. The technique was Tim Holtz's swooshing method. Once dry, I then added PaperArtsy Infusions on top, attempting to use similar colours to the Oxides. These are not permanent backgrounds so needed fixing with Ranger's Distress glaze before adding further layers. 

They look so pretty even before I add any stencilling or stamping on top. 

Here are just a few I added further layers to. This included stamping: I used some PaperArtsy mini  stamps and some stamps designed by Michelle Ward for GreenPepperStudios. I'm not sure these are still available as I bought them several years ago. I also added some marks using bottle caps/tops and a white Sharpie paint pen. These were now ready for the focal images to be placed on top. 

 

 You can see which stamp sets I used over on the PA blog. I used a mix of Derwent Inktense blocks (grated then mixed with water to create a watercolour mix) and Copic markers, to colour in the flowers, butterflies and dragonflies. I also added some glitter to some of the images and some text.

Now, I turned my attention to creating some storage tins to keep these Coins in! I had seen an idea on Pinterest to turn a large Pringles tin into an ATCoin storage container. I preferred to use the smaller size. 

This seemed a more manageable size. I had great fun creating a masterboard to cut these panels from. This time I used Paperartsy Fresco chalk paints and a couple of Paperartsy  stencils.

 I used Paperartsy grunge paste, pushed through this scrummy stencil (PSO34) before brayering some Paperartsy Fresco chalk paints across the 12" Smoothy card I used for this. I created several sheets and used several colours of Frescos. 

 The raised pattern resisted the paint and left lots of white space, which I really liked. Once I had created a layer of colour, I added further stencilling on top, using one of Kay Carley's new stencils, and mixing grunge paste with the Infusions. I explained on the PA blog my surprise at the results but I was pleased with the colours this technique produced. 

 This is such a pretty stencil. I love the panels I created to wrap around the tins. I only needed to paint a base coat of black paint and create a larger Coin for the lid. I was very happy to have enough left over to create some matching Coins. So, there we are. I do hope you like my ATCoins and want to get involved in this new swapping craze. These are all up for swaps if you're interested. Just leave me a comment below. I will leave you with a couple of close-up photos of the Coins. Until next time...

 Don't forget to pop over to the paperartsy blog for more inspiration here. I would love to read your opinion of this new craze in the comments below!

Circle Journal 3 -Final pages

Hi everyone!
Back again to share the process steps of the pages I created in Wanda Hentges Circle Journal. I and 11 FB friends have been sending our journals around the UK and over to the US to allow each of us to create art on at least one page in each others' journals. Great fun. This last 'Cycle' has taken a year to complete and Wanda's journal has now been received by Catherine before winging its way to Wanda in the US.  I know she will be delighted with all the glorious art work inside. Here are the pages I created for her...

We decided to create our journals this year using envelopes. It was amazing to see 12 completely different ideas on how to do this. All journals were handmade. I'm hoping to post photos of several of them on here at the end of July, so watch this space! I might even be brave enough to try a Facebook live! So, how did I start this journal spread? 

I started by brayering the colours you can see in the photo horizontally and vertically across the envelope pages which I had previously gessoed. These are new PaperArtsy colours produced by Seth Apter, and paints by Dina Wakely for Ranger Indistries. They really are delicious and produce a very different colour blend to the ones I usually go for. But I wanted to produce a more subdued background for the flower images I intended to place on top. 

The next stage was to use some DecoArt Crackle paste through a stencil to create some interest in what would be a rather plain, unfussy background - not like me at all, but I was aiming to produce a style I felt Wanda would prefer. I wanted to keep these quite light and ensure some white space in the finished page. 

More colours were added, very lightly with a small brayer this time as I just wanted to catch the raised crackled pattern and the pages. This is so unlike my usual Gung-Ho attitude to paint, but it felt good! The paints used here are: Eggplant, Purple Rain, Butter and Beach Hut. All Paperartsy Fresco Chalk acrylic paints, available here: www.paperartsy.co.uk and some local retailers. 

The next step was to add some stamping, but again, I didn't want this to be intrusive so I only used bits of stamping here and there. I used a Paperartsy Hot Picks stamp set: HP1501EZ and a Mini Stamp: MN41. I used two contrasting colours to do this: Eggplant and Butter. Next, I added some simple stencilling using the same contrasting colours and adding a touch of green with Magic Moss, another of Seth Apter's new colours. 

Now it was beginning to look interesting and I was falling in love with it! Best to leave it when I'm happy. So, I started stamping out the gorgeous little flowers I was anxious to use, a new set designed by Kay Carley, for PaperArtsy. 

I kept very much to the colours I had already used but, of course, Bougainvillea - another PaperArtsy Fresco Chal paint - had to make an appearance. It's my all time fave! So, some new paints, some older ones, but all Fresco Chalks. I really like their matte, yet quite bright, finish.

So, with the addition of some of JoFy's stamp sets from previous releases, I was able to complete the whole spread. I'm particularly pleased with myself for using PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk paints to colour all the leaves and flowers. I'm not usually very good at doing this and generally resort to my Copic pens, but I'm really pleased with the blending and will completely ignore the mistakes! I do hope you have found this post useful. If so, I would really appreciate a brief comment. Thankyou so much for popping by. Until next time, happy crafting! 

Artful Shrine

Hi there!
Gosh, it's been such a long time since I blogged on here despite having several projects that I meant to blog! Tonight I'm linking this post with my project over on the Paperartsy blog Here. The current theme is all about 'Shrines' and there have been some wonderfully imaginative interpretations of this theme already. Please take the time to have a look through the last week's blog posts.  So inspiring. If you contribute your own idea to the album you are in with a chance to win one of Paperartsy's very unique art aprons!

I was lucky enough to be able to use a variety of my Lynne Perrella stamps. I used various images from five sets in this project. If you pop over to the paperartsy blog you will be able to see which ones I used. The project started out like this:

The ATC frame comes ready to assemble from www.calicocraftparts.co.uk a company recommended to me by Julie-Ann Lee - the Queen of mini shrines. The large wooden tag was a fabulous bargain pack of assorted wooden tags from the MDF man. I'm afraid I don't know him by any other name! Lesley Ebdon was the link here, kindly organising a wonderful deal for several of her crafty friends and I was lucky enough to be included. Thanks Lesley! 

In order to create the apex of the shrine and hide the tag shape, I had to cut out some greyboard for both sides of the tag and join them with thin strips along the sloping edges. I was pleased with the result but it was fiddly. I then decided to use greyboard and Paperartsy Smoothy 240gms card to create panels to stamp on. If you read the blogpost you will see what a long-winded way I found to do this! Anyway, the main thing is, I was pleased with the result! 

I love the colours I've chosen here. The frames are painted with Fresco China. I love that colour! I've listed the other colours and added more details on the PA blog if you're interested to know which ones I used. Quite typically, Bougainvillea made an appearance. 

The image in the  little frame was embellished with beads, gems and German scrap in order to create a rich central focus. I must admit that I rather went to town on adding all of this ephemera. I had a great time looking through my stash to keep to  the colour choices I'd made. I really love how the background colours come through the stamped images. 

Of course by the time I had glued on the label frame and the ATC box shrine, some of these stamped images were a little hidden, but it couldn't be helped. If you have been following the PaperArtsy blog challenge, I do hope you think this is an effective contribution to the theme. Why not have a go yourself! I'd love to see your ideas. Until next time! 

I'd love to know you stopped by! Please leave a comment so I can link up 

To your blog too! 

Baa baa bunting!

Hi everyone,
Thankyou so much if you have just popped over from my main blog post on the Paperartsy blog. Just a quick link post tonight as I'm busy looking after  the  Grandfairies! The project that I have been working on ties in with the current PaperArtsy blog challenge: Banners and Bunting. I was lucky enough to be asked to use 'Elenazinski' stamp sets, both new and old, for my bunting.

By the time this banner was finished it was so long that I could only take photos in the garden! So, here's a closer view of the circles, perfect size for Elena's sheep. Aren't they cute? 

And now the triangles... Here I used some of the background stamps on her very first stamp set she designed for PaperArtsy. Elena is a fantastic artist and sells all sorts of things in her etsy shop! Here. She's also a very talented writer. I want her to write and illustrate a children's book! 

The stamps I used were these:

The sheep are one of her new sets. I love all her designs. They are great fun to stamp out and colour in. All my grandchildren have received birthday and Christmas cards using her stamps. For this bunting, I used Paperartsy Fresco chalk paints for all the background layers and Copic marker pens for colouring the images. This is going to adorn my youngest grandfairy's nursery when her mum moves into her new house! I'm sure she will love it! 

If you are interested in the process steps in creating this bunting, why don't you pop over to the PaperArtsy blog, using the link above. Thankyou so much for popping by! Until next time....