If this design looks familiar it’s because I posted a couple of similar cards a few weeks back. They featured the same pretty Lavinia stencil, ‘leaf trails’. The difference between the cards is partly the colours but more significantly today’s cards feature splatter! You know how I feel about splatter. I always say if a project doesn’t seem quite finished, add some splatter. The panels on these cards were made with alcohol inks on a gel plate. I dropped three or four alcohol inks on the plate along with some isopropyl alcohol to help the inks move and blend. I dropped the leaf trails stenci ..read more

Recently I posted several ’tiled’ collage cards on the blog and mentioned there would be more to come. Today’s cards once again feature gel printed panels arranged and decorated in two ways. I used three different gel prints to ’tile’ the card above, a plain blue print, a print created with a zig-zag stencil and a print made with the an impression from an embossing folder. To tie together the dark blue, light blue and yellow + blue prints I added a navy wildflower (Tim Holtz) and navy ink splatter. To create the square birthday card below I used ’tiles’ from the same print but rearranged th ..read more

I haven’t used this eye catching technique in a while but I really should try it more often. These two cards were made as part of my Floral Faves online class, a lesson about using metallic watercolours on black watercolour paper. Maybe black watercolour paper has been around for a long time but when I first found it several years ago I was very keen to try it. As you can imagine the paints need to be somewhat opaque to show up on black. I use Coliro and Finetec metallic watercolours (two names but all made by Finetec). I have also been given some Beam metallic watercolours which I will try ..read more

As mentioned in previous posts my stash of gel prints is considerable. I am always on the look out for ways to use them. Large prints are great for covers on handmade books; I use many smaller prints for card fronts and collage. These two collage cards are made from four or five different gel prints. I punched the squares with a 1 3/8″ punch then fiddled around with the layout until I was happy with it. Because I love things to match all the prints had some blue in them and there is some repetition of pink as well. The prints were part of my stash and were not made specifically for these ca ..read more

These spring flowers are all silhouette stamps from Darkroom Door, some from the Nature Walk set and a few from Wildflowers vol 1 & 2. Even though the stamps are solid with no detail it is possible to use ink pads and markers to give them more depth. This card is a sample from my Floral Faves online class. In the class I feature no-line watercolour with outline stamps, techniques with brushstroke stamps and ways to use silhouette stamps as featured on this card. I often use my silhouette stamps with a black or dark ink over a sunset sky but I do like to give them colour sometimes with a ..read more

There are many ways to use stencils on the gel plate, one being with alcohol inks rather than acrylic paint. When I use alcohol inks I do pull the print with acrylic paint but most of the colour you see is from the initial layer of alcohol inks. You can lay the stencil down then add alcohol inks or do it the other way round, dropping the stencil onto the wet alcohol ink. Some gel-printers add a layer of hand sanitiser first but that isn’t what I did to make these prints. I’m not 100% sure but I believe I lay the stencil down on top of a layer of alcohol ink for these prints. I use some isopr ..read more

I guess the title gives it away but I hope you can see the ocean, the rocks and the shore in this art journal spread. As with many recent blog posts I used gel prints to create this scene in my 7”x7“ journal. I created this double page scene after seeing a torn paper landscape a friend had created. I tore strips of paper from several blue prints and brown prints. As I laid them out I realized that the order in which I glued them would affect the end result. I had intentionally ripped the paper to have white edges that looked like the surf. Rather than try and plan the whole design I just st ..read more

When fresh flowers for gel printing are not readily available, there are always the die-cut ones. In making today’s cards I gel printed patterns using die-cut flowers and leaves and a mix of blue, green and white paints. Both the flowers on the card above and the stem of leaves on the card below are from Tim Holtz ‘vault wildflowers’ die set. The prints are grungy because I built up some layers of outlines on the plate before adding an image transfer text layer to the final print. To finish the cards I added a cardstock flower or stem of leaves to match the partial prints in the background ..read more

Do you have more gel prints than you know what to do with? Are some of them not very interesting or only partial prints? I definitely answer yes to both those questions. I keep finding though, that the grungy prints make really nice backgrounds for journal pages and cards. I have many of my gel prints sorted by colour so I pulled several 6 x 6 prints from the blue folder and used them on a few different cards. I also had green, yellow and gold toned prints on hand to make some multicoloured cards; I’ll share them another day. To create this card I cut the blue gel prints with a rectangle die ..read more

April showers bring May flowers I’ve heard so the showers we’re having today should only help bring some colour to the garden in the coming weeks. The dancing daisies stamp from Penny Black is such a beauty and I love to create a sense of movement with layered stamping. I created this panel on hot pressed watercolour paper a few years back as added inspiration for my Floral Faves online class but it was sitting in a folder not being enjoyed. I recently trimmed the ends off, turned it into a card and it is on it’s way to a friend for her birthday. I only used three ink colours and relied on ..read more