Getting creative with the gel plate

Tags, and Embellishments kits designed by me!

Available from Tando Creative

I just LOVE mono-printing, love it. It's unpredictable, surprising, and most of all messy :-) Today I decided to have a play with a small gel plate to see if I could print a background straight onto a greyboard tag, using fluid acrylics. I took  lots of snapshots as I was doing this so that you can see exactly how things worked out.

I began with a large tag, and some embellishments from the Tando kits, and gave everything a layer of gesso, and then I scribbled into it just for a bit of texture.

Next I selected my colours from the  DecoArt Media line of fluid acrylics because I really wanted to see how they would behave on the Gel plate, especially going straight onto greyboard. I think you can probably tell from the photo that these are my *favourite* colours and they are looking well loved and nicely messy! I also used the DecoArt Tinting Base, Gesso and Matte Medium.

I used a small gel plate and used a brayer to add thin, light, patchy layers of colour. I started with the yellow, and then built up the colours in layers:

I added Turquoise, Green Gold, Primary Magenta,  Quinacridone Red ...

...followed by Quinacridone Magenta:

So, then I had my mono-printed background but it still needed a lot of work. Here are a few more steps.

Paint through a variety of stencils:

Stamping using Archival ink pads:

Texture Cube 1 designed by me!

For Stampotique Originals

Stamp from Skulldoggery by Andy Skinner

Doodling with a white gel pen:

A bit of junk stamping with bottle lids and an old gift card with metallic Gold:

Now, back to the embellishments. I added some paint to these using co-ordinating colours, but when painting small embellishments like this I always aim to keep it a bit lighter in the centre which I do with a bit of help from the Tinting Base:

Finally I pieced it all together and added a quote and a hanger, I may keep this on the wall of my little art studio:

Or I may keep it in my Tando Divided Box which has all of my other tags and bits and bobs:

Divided box kit designed by me!

Available from Tando Creative