New/Underused Product Part 1

Linden Leaf is hosting some different LTC swaps this year.  She posted them last year giving us plenty of time to learn, play, and work on our cards.  For the swap you are supposed to pick a new or underused product and use that in different ways to make four sets of cards.  I picked the Gelli Plate.  I have 2 Gelli Plates and I have used them a few times but I thought I was not using it to its fullest.

The swap was posted in September with the due date in February.  I took advantage of a Saturday in November with nothing going on and made my cards for the first two swaps.  I saw this technique on Instagram and loved it immediately.  Here is the You Tube video if you want to watch.

It is pretty easy but I'll walk you thru it.  You put a little paint on the Gelli Plate.  I think in the past I used more paint than necessary.  In many of the videos you see them rolling extra paint off on a scrap piece of paper.  You want to use one tone of paint in the first layer and a different tone in the second layer.  For example, you don't want black in one corner and yellow in another corner.  I hope that makes sense :D

After you have the plate covered with paint, you lay down a big stencil and pull a print.  LEAVE the stencil down.  I made the mistake of taking the stencil off the first time, oops.  Leave the stencil down.  If there is extra paint in the open areas you can wipe them off with a baby wipe/damp paper towel.

While the stencil is still down, take a contrasting shade of paints and apply them with a sponge.  My first layer was light colored so I used dark colors for this next layer.  In the next part of the video, she takes a rubber stamp, put paint on it, and stamps it on the Gelli Plate/stencil to add texture.  I did this too but you can't see it on my cards.  I would probably skip this step next time.

Finally, you pull the stencil off.  I was really nervous about this next part.  You let the Gelli Plate dry and apply a thin layer of white acrylic paint. (I forgot to take a pic of this part.) I loved what I saw on the plate and I was worried that covering it with the white paint would ruin it.  But it did not :)  Now you get to pull your awesome print!  I love how they turned out.

I had to do this three times to make the number of cards I wanted.  The first time, I printed on plain white card stock.  The second time, I printed on text paper from an old book.  And the last time, I took a brown paper lunch bag, opened it up, and printed on that.

Linden Leaf said we could reuse old stamps or use the same stamp for each of these swaps.  I carved the finger print heart and I will use it for all of these swaps.  As you can see, I stamped it in pink on white paper, cut it out, and attached it with a 3-D glue dot.  Then I glued the whole thing to pink scrapbook paper.

New/Underused Product: Gelli Prints-Stencils

One of the things I discovered in this process it that the paint does matter. :P  I always bought cheap acrylic paint and I noticed that it is not glossy.  The more I work with the plate, the more I want a glossy finish.  As I buy new paints, I will defiantly look for nicer quality or a high gloss paint.

Thanks Linden Leaf for hosting these swaps :)