Gel Printing with recycled cardboard

Posted: July 19, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: carved leaves, Darkroom Door, gel press, layered Xmas wreath die set, Penny Black, sleigh, Tutorial | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

I posted a video last week featuring gel prints with stencils. In today’s technique video I use cardboard found at home. One piece was the packaging for eggs and the other a piece of corrugated cardboard.

The huge snowballs falling in the card above were printed using the large circles on the egg carton. I could have done more on the gel plate with extra colour or texture but I kept it simple which works well behind the more intricate sleigh. You can see my process in the video below.

The card below also features a gel print background made with an egg carton but I pulled two prints on the one panel both with green and white paint and egg carton circles.

The card below also features a gel print background made with an egg carton but I pulled two prints on the one panel both with green and white paint and egg carton circles. I stamped leaves from the Darkroom Door stamp set, ‘carved leaves vol 1’ over the bokeh-like circle background. To get the right tones of green in the stamping I used both shady lane and rain forest versafine clair inks one over the top of the other. The sentiment is from the ‘happy birthday’ sentiment strip.

In the video I also made prints with a piece of corrugated cardboard pressing it down on the gel press once for a striped pattern and twice for a grid pattern. I’ve turned a couple of those prints into cards which will be on the blog tomorrow. I hope you try gel printing with some recycling you find at your place. See you soon.

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Fine Flowers

Posted: July 16, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Darkroom Door, fine flowers vol 2, you are everything | Tags: , | 8 Comments

I put some new inks and stamps to work on this card. The flower is from the Darkroom Door set, Fine Flowers vol 2 designed by my friend Godelieve (Stamping Matilda). There are six flowers in the set so this is just the beginning of the fun.

The background colour is a newish ink, speckled egg distress. I splattered masking fluid on a piece of water colour paper, smooshed speckled egg on a glass mat then added water before pressing the watercolour panel into the ink to create soft blurry blue smudges. The flowers are stamped with another new distress ink, crackling campfire. It stamps as a warm red but dilutes to more of an orange as you can see on the petals. I stamped the flowers one at a time and blended the stamped ink to fill the petals. I inked the centres with a black soot marker which blurred into the orange. To make the centres more prominent I drew dots and squiggles with a black embossing pen then embossed in black powder.

Before adding the embossed sentiment from DD ‘you are everything’ set I splattered speckled egg ink and also some water. At the risk of over dotting I also added white and black with gel pens. The stamp has its own little dots around it so adding a few more seemed fitting.

This watercolour technique is one featured in my Floral Faves online class and the colour choice is covered in my Colour Clues class. Both classes are self paced and filled with instructional videos and photo inspiration.

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Winter Garden art journal page

Posted: July 14, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Art Journal, bookworm, Correspondence, Darkroom Door, gel press, little swirls, nomad, Paper Rose, snowflakes, Trees, Wildflowers Vol 1 | Tags: , , , , | 12 Comments

It’s been a while since I worked in my book themed art journal. As I looked over a table covered in gel prints I settled on two blue ones filled with pattern and paint. Both were on rice paper and sized 6″x6″ which is not big enough to cover the whole journal page. I decided to tear a rough edge on the bottom and glue the panels with space above and below.

The inspiration for the page is Kristin Hannah’s novel ‘Winter Garden’. I used Darkroom Door floral stamps to decorated the gel prints with blue flowers then added more stamping to the blue area and the white space at the bottom of the page.

Picking from a few themes in the book I stamped trees to represent the orchard, a suitcase to represent the escape from Leningrad, books from the library where the main character worked. I also used number, correspondence and snowflake stamps to complete the collage.

I am always in two minds about adding words to my pages and this time was no exception. Rather than a quote I just added the name of the novel and author. I used pigment and archival inks for all the stamping, white gesso around the edges and white ink and embossing powder to add the snowflake borders.

Have you read any Kristin Hannah? My book club considers ‘The Nightingale’ our best choice so far! We are always searching for good book club reads; if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments.

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Gel Printing with stencils + video

Posted: July 12, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Butterflies, classic cars vol 1, Darkroom Door, fragments, gel press, gelli plate, Heather lowercase stamp set, little swirls, Nature Walk, Paper Rose, Pink Fresh studio, so extra supporting sentiments | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

In recent gel printing sessions I have used some of my intricate stencils from Paper Rose Studio. This stencil, ‘little swirls‘ makes a particularly beautiful background. I’ve been printing on a 6″x6″ gel plate with a 6″x6″ stencil but I cut the print down to make a 4¼” x 5½” card.

I used stamps from Darkroom Door’s nature walk , butterflies and happy birthday sets. (all linked at the end of the post). The process for making this type of print is shown in the video below.

After any gel printing session I usually have quite a pile of prints, some become cards but I am hoping to use more in my art journal. I have to be a bit more adventurous in tearing and layering and turning them into more than just a patterned print.

The making of the background above is included in the video. To turn it into a birthday card I stamped ‘have fun’ directly on the print then popped up a sentiment strip on top. The words are stamped in Gina K obsidian amalgam ink using the Pink Fresh Studio ‘Heather’ lowercase alphabet set.

The making of the background below is also part of the video and you can see the mustard paint beaded on the surface of the gel plate making an allover pattern when printed. I didn’t necessarily want the beading but was happy when it ended up uniform. Paints of different brands perform differently on the gel press so experimentation is necessary to work out how much paint and which brands will give you the results you want.

I turned this background into another birthday card by embossing a car from the Darkroom Door Classic Cars vol 1 set along with a sentiment from the same set plus one from the Happy Birthday set.

I also filmed some gel printing with a few textured surfaces from the recycling box; I’ll be sharing that video soon.

I’d love to hear how you use your gel prints; I’m always open to ideas.

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Puppy’s Quilt in Pencil

Posted: July 9, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Colorado Craft Company, Coloured pencil, puppy's quilt | Tags: , | 6 Comments

More pencil on kraft cardstock, this time Faber Castell polychromos pencils and a black stamped image from the Colorado Craft Company. My first card with this stamp, ‘puppy’s quilt‘ featured watercolour and lots of blue. This time I have included more white which is always eye catching on kraft along with blue, green and burgandy.

A bonus when colouring an animal on kraft cardstock is using the light brown of the kraft as a colour in the fur or feathers. I have coloured the dog with white and grey but there are light tan areas that show through the shading.

I used archival jet black ink for the outline stamping, I like the way it dries quickly before I have a chance to smudge it! Having used both the inktense and the polychromos pencils on kraft I think I would say the inktense are a little brighter and chalkier, the polychromos more muted and creamier. Not sure how helpful that comparison is but you can compare the two looks if you go back to Monday’s floral card.

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2021 BuJo – July theme

Posted: July 7, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Bullet Journal, Dingbat notebooks | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

With all the flowers blooming in my garden right now I have a wealth of inspiration. I decided to go for daisies but then realised I didn’t want to fiddle with white petals and settled on black-eyed Susans instead.

I tested the black fine tip markers currently in my possession to see which ones were waterproof and would give me a dark black. I ended up choosing the small and the medium from a set of Faber Castell Pitt artist pens. I did most of the drawing with the small tip (0.3mm) and then used the medium (0.7mm) for the calendar page.

I drew all the daisies myself and let the black ink dry before colouring with orangey-yellow and light green brushmarkers from the Staedtler set of watercolour brushmarkers.

I used the same four pens for all the pages. On the calendar page below I made a couple of mistakes, in marker! Not ideal but I came up with some fixes that satisfied me. I will do a bit more pencil sketching next time; I think by the time I got to the calendar page I was not being as careful as I had been for the previous two pages!

The first mistake you can probably guess was a vertical line which did not line up to make even 7×7 dot squares! To cover the mistake I made all the vertical lines off by one dot! The second mistake was drawing the title letters in pen without sketching them in pencil first. Both the downstroke of the J and the curve of the U ended up narrower than the rest of the letters. Solution? A few little flowers to pad them out!

Despite the errors along the way I am happy with the July theme because it is bright and happy and showed me I could draw my elements from scratch and not need a stamp or die every time! Hope your July is off to a great start.

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Floral Focus in pencil

Posted: July 5, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Brutus Monroe, floral focus, Heather lowercase die set, Inktense pencils, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Last week I shared a card featuring the Pinkfresh Studio background stamp, ‘floral focus‘ watercoloured with Karin Markers. Today I have another card with the same stamp but pencil coloured this time using Derwent inktense pencils. At some point I should do pencil colouring on white or cream cardstock again but I am still in love with the look of pencil on kraft. Inktense pencils are watersoluble but you can also use them as traditional pencils with no water added, that’s what I did here.

I embossed the background stamp in white powder, another technique that looks great on kraft cardstock then used the inktense pencils to fill the flowers and leaves. The flowers are coloured with red violet, fuchsia and antique white. The leaves and stems I did with felt green and apple green and the small flowers are coloured with sun yellow and antique white.

To finish the card I added a strip of violet cardstock and cut letters from the same cardstock with the Pinkfresh ‘Heather lowercase letter’ dies. The little sentiment is from PF set ‘scripted bold sentiments. You might think this is an odd pairing of sentiments; I was thinking it would suit someone starting something new, some encouragement along with a reminder to enjoy the experience.

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Captivating Blue

Posted: June 30, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: captivating, Catherine Pooler inks, Penny Black | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

I’ve been creating backgrounds for landscape stamping lately often by smooshing a few inks on my glass mat, diluting the ink then swiping the watercolour paper through it. The background for this floral card was done the same way and features faded jeans and kitsch flamingo distress inks plus some scattered salt for subtle patterns.

I stamped the Penny Black ‘captivating’ stamp in Catherine Pooler ‘juniper mist’ ink then blended the stamped ink to fill all the lower petals of the fuchsias. I painted the upper petals with kitsch flamingo and the leaves with CP eucalyptus ink. For the tips of the little stamen I used a white gel pen.

With all the pattern in the background I kept the sentiment simple with part of a stamp from the PB ‘carefree wishes’ set in CP juniper mist.

This stamp features in one of the lessons included in my Floral Faves online class where I teach a range of techniques for use with floral stamps. It’s a self paced class where you can access the video content at your own convenience.

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Floral Focus

Posted: June 28, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: floral focus, Heather lowercase stamp set, Karin brushmarkers, Lea ornate uppercase stamp set, Pink Fresh studio | Tags: , | 7 Comments

Hello! I am excited to be sharing this post here and on the Foiled Fox blog today. All this floral beauty is on one stamp from Pink Fresh Studio and it’s called ‘floral focus’. Since it arrived on my work table I’ve tried it with pencil colouring, emboss resist and this Karin brushmarker watercolour technique. I love how bright and summery it looks with these colours.

Floral Focus is a large rubber background stamp and rubber stamps are my favourite to work with. I know transparent stamps are great for placement but rubber stamps seem to hold onto their ink better. I will always have both in my collection but I get a little bit excited when I ink the rubber stamps. I used a stamp positioner for this panel and inked the large pink flowers first with magenta red and henna markers. If I get ink on adjacent areas I just wipe it off before stamping. Once stamped I blended the pink ink to fill the petals and restamped the centres in brown to make them a bit bolder. Next I inked the small flowers and buds with the gold brushmarker, then blended with water. For the leaves and stems I inked with both henna and grass markers to get a muted green rather than a bright green. Finallly I did the twiggy bits with the henna marker.

The large letters are from two Pink Fresh studio alphabet sets, the ‘H’ is from Lea’s Ornate uppercase set and the rest of the word from the Heather lowercase set. I stamped several times in versafine vintage sepia then embossed in clear powder for a glossy finish.

Thanks for dropping by today, make sure you visit the Foiled Fox blog for more information and inspiration!

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Country scene

Posted: June 25, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: arbors, Penny Black, snow fence, Stamped Landscapes | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

Another stamped scene, this one a little closer to home than the desert in the previous post. I paired the PB ‘arbor’ and ‘snow fence’ stamps to create a pastoral scene. I worked on hot pressed watercolour paper using distress inkpads and markers as my ‘watercolour paints’.

As the fence posts are in the foreground I stamped them first in a mix of browns, black and grey then blended on paper with water. Once the posts were dry I inked the trees in a few greens and brown avoiding the area behind the fence post. I should have masked the posts but I was feeling a bit lazy so I just inked and stamped several times getting closer each time to the post without stamping over it.

Once the trees were completed I painted a light wash of crushed olive and peeled paint inks over the ground area then used a fan brush which I’ve left untouched for years to paint grass in both forest moss and peeled paint. For a bit of interest I added blue dots to look like flowers under the trees. My stash of birthday cards is looking low so I added a partial sentiment from the birthday humor set. Are you a scenic stamper? What are your favourite techniques for bringing scenes to life.

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