I watched a video from Elizabeth St Hilaire on pulling a gel print on crumpled deli paper, but thru a stencil. I liked the effect and wanted to give it a go. Sadly her own stencils aren’t easily found in the UK (nor her stamps) so I used some of the PMAS stencils. They actually do free shipping over $125 and I saved up to place a large order. I used similar colours, dark blues and purples, and metallics for a pop of brightness.
After pulling some basic solid backgrounds in a dark colour, I crumpled the deli paper into a tight ball then didn’t smooth it out fully before pulling thru a stencil. I did find that rolling over the deli paper wiht my soft rubber brayer gave me more from inside the stencil on my pull.
I did pull thru the stencil for some
but rather than waste the paint of pull it on something else, I pulled the metallic paint after removing the stencil as well, And I really liked those too.
All in all it was a bit of fun. And I have an idea how to use them – shocking!
Son + cat are settling in, slowly. I’ve had a few scratches and strokes accepted, but not yet had her leap onto my lap – Dear Son says that is good, because she needs her nails trimmed and he hasn’t done that yet. Ouch!
First, the very BEST news is Son + Cat arrived in the UK both in good working order LOL! Tired, and a long stressful day for all of us, but now I can breathe. I failed to pre-plan and schedule a post for this morning so I am popping on with something from a few weeks ago. I’ll possibly that the weekend for sure and maybe even next week to settle in. I have some Drs. appointments to deal with on top of the visitors and the whole never-had-a-cat adjustment, so I am thinking it might be good. Except WOYWW is 700 next week so can’t miss THAT…. {sigh}
At some point in time I saw something somewhere about the tops for Gloss Spray bottles. Like almost every spray product in existence the tops clog. All the helpful tips and tricks might work for a BIT, but we all get lazy so they won’t work forever. Again someone somewhere commented something like “Ranger SELLS replacement tops for a reasonable price…” and it kinda annoyed me. I had dragged out my bottles (after a year at least) and yeah, 100% of them were clogged tight. More annoying, even soaking them in hot water and spraying to clear them did nothing to improve the action. I managed some gel plate play time with gloss spray play and I will just pop in the samples here
Most of them involved spattering or a paintbrush or a dropper, anything but the spray nozzle. In frustration I went on the hunt. I did find them sold in 2-packs from Ranger, but to cover all my bottles it would have cost quite a lot. Then I found these on Amazon.
The important thing to note is that the measurement of the bottle is 24mm. There are lots of options, but at less than £1 each and enough to mostly swap out every bottle I have, these suited me quite well. When I opened the pack I was sure I had made a mistake cause they LOOKED like they were too small. In fact they fit like a dream. The tube that extends down into the bottle is long so it needs to be snipped, but other than that it is very much just replace and spray.
I will try a newish tip, to add a tiny bit of water inside the clear plastic cap, wipe off the pinpoint nozzle hole, and make sure the cap fits VERY snugly (listen for the CLICK) and see, but I swear, the person who actually comes up with a non-clogging spray nozzle will make a FORTUNE…
It might amuse my cat-loving readers that I made some visual cues so we remember to be mindful of open doors with an inside-only cat in residence…Finally a use for all those leftover scrapbook letters!
So you saw a glimpse of the final paper I made in response to an Olive & Icy Blue challenge. It was pretty funny, when I was rifling back thru my stash of scrapbook papers, I found THIS:
I mean, c’mon! I would never have guessed it. and I wonder if the reasn it is still in my stash is that weird colour combo! another point of interest is the fact that this time, I did NOT cut off the info-strip at the bottom. I mean, why would I? It extends the size of the paper and isn’t seen so…
I reversed the layers, beginning with the icy blue and adding the olive over that – II used that weird foam stamp I cut from one of my neurographic drawings and oh man I love how it looks!
I added more olive around the edges and a darker Phthalo Turquoise with another wallpaper stamp for some depth and drama
and then some stenciled numbers and finally some copper.
In the end it looked like this:
And side-by-side? I def. think I like the predominantly blue one better.
Do you?
Update on Son + Cat place holder. If I know, I’ll add it….
Happy WOYWW!! Son + Cat has been a challenging situation. Original flight was cancelled for a COVID outbreak at the port of SFO, so we had a stressful couple of days. The cat now flies from LA today and Dear Son from SFO. We got word last night it was approved but Dear Son was deeply asleep as we were trying to alert him he had about a hour to get the cat ready for pick up! Weirdly, there was a 5.1 earthquake in the Bay Area and that was what woke him up.
I poured my energy into a bit of a tidy up of my horrible, horrible desk.
You can see my second attempt at the Olive & Icy challenge, this time with a more blue base and olive on top. Do I like it better? Not sure. But the desk needs sorting and them I think I can maybe assess better. And like that {snap!}
…it’s tidy! If only it were that easy. I’ll stop there because I have a full day today (Darling Daughter’s Birthday) and with all the stress of the cat transport I am a bit frazzled!
Well. It has been interesting. After mixing up the various shades of Olive Green, I now looked at my paint stash for an ICY BLUE. Nothing fit the boll, so I grabbed some Dyna Blue, some white and some Iridescent medium. Not sure I really needed the medium, but I had it so I whacked some in.
I think that fits the bill. So then what? I had recently unearthed my wallpaper samples and the texture plates I made from them years ago. I had set myself a further challenge to only use these two colours with the addition of black and white to created various shades and then as a pop. I Allowed a final colour to add some drama. So I first did the icy blue over the olive with a swirly wallpaper like a stamp, then sponged on some lightened olive
Back to the wallpaper and a lighter blue, then more icy blue lines rolled on with that PlayDoh tool I use so often and darker olive with a PM Artists Studio stencil
It’s all looking not to bad, I think.
Time for a bit of drama, with black asemic writing stenciled on then white spatters.
I really kinda like that. But I wanted to do as in the video and add a really contrasting pop of colour. I thought of violet rather than red (I only have a few reds and two are transparent!) so I stamped that on. I am loving this foam stamp I made as the position of the circles lets me nestle them together fo a more overall design, if I am careful how I position the stamp.
So yeah, not bad really. I MIGHT have liked it better without the violet but I don’t hate the final outcome. I am scheduling this post but I’ll edit and update if I get any word of the transport of Son + Cat.
Arrggh! Sadly, there has been a COVID outbreak in the area of the port of San Francisco that departs the pets, so after a tense 24 hours we had to cancel Dear Son + Cat and try to sort something out. At this point, no idea when they will travel. It might be a road trip to LA or it might be a longer delay while a new Health Certificate is acquired (only good for 10 days and 10 days expires before the port will reopen) we have no idea. Frustrated and sad for my hug, delayed.
I tried to take my mind off things by doing a colour challenge. One I really felt I was going to hate, and I guess it felt like spilling my feelings out would help. It did, kinda.
The colours were – wait for it …. Icy Blue and OLIVE GREEN. Blergh.
I didn’t have really either one of those colours so I grabbed what I thought I needed and began mixing. Olive Green first:
The best and easiest way to make olive (in MY experience, yours may differ) is mixing black and yellow. I have a TON of yellow shades. The weird thing is, some of the yellows that look super similar in the TUBE, or even squeezed out, produce really different shades in some cases.
For some of them, although I tried to be very consistent, I sure didn’t MEASURE the amounts. But the middle two in natural light on my desk look really similar in the tube but super different when mixed. Also the Hobbycraft paint is really gloopy. Anyway you can see the variety of colours. In the end, it felt like the best plan was a kind of overall application of all of those colours onto an old sheet of ugly scrapbooking paper.
I mean, it isn’t my favourite colour but as a background texture it isn’t horrible. Cannot imagine the icy blue on top, but we shall see.
Well. We are so close now that I am fairly vibrating with excitement. Litter trays ordered (that will be an adjustment for sure) and scratching posts and special diet cat food. Blimey. And yes, my mind is very much elsewhere. If I am honest, I feel like Dear Son is going to be so jet-lagged I might actually get plenty of time at my desk LOL! We shall see.
But here, briefly, is the larger Decorate-It-Yourself 2023 set to print. The calendar block is right down near the bottom so there is loads of space at the top for decoration.
My plan is to do gel prints on them, but really, you could add a photo, you could add stamping or pretty paper or any other thing that strikes your fancy. Let you kids draw pictures on the top even. Where the 3×4 versions are pretty small and don’t have room for much, these have a decent 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 area – give or take, depending on the number of weeks. I only managed one or two (and only really love one of them LOL!) but you can see what I mean!
As ever, I would be really pleased to see how you have used them!
Now, I must go over the final list of things for Darling Daughter’s birthday party tomorrow. Really, could se have any fuller a week? I doubt it and I am really hoping that MAYBE by the end of next week we can begin to exhale. At least until Thanksgiving, all the skating comps and the Christmas Ice show and the run up to that big holiday in December.
Dear Son + Cat arrive on MONDAY and there is likely to be a whole week of me sharing old projects or things I feel should maybe be dragged up from the depths of my blog and given some time in the light once again. But for today I have a new 2023 calendars for you.
As I have been deeply immersed in my gel plate play at the moment, I thought I would go back to an older idea and try to incorporate the gel plate and my calendar printables together. At first I began playing with my circles.
I had a go at decorating some of those by masking off the printed text area and pulling a print on the whole area. I got to use one of my favourite wallpaper texture plates from a very long time ago, and it still works.
I could have had a lighter touch withthe paint and the impression would have been much clearer I think. Some of the others:
I have ALSO been looking at the DIY ones and thinking something more along the lines of the faux letterpress ones would be a better idea – more room to decorate!
Happy WOYWW to all! My crazy week is half over and I am counting the sleeps till my Dear Son arrives. FIVE to go. Vibrating with worry and joy and will not rest till I can give him a long postponed hug. My desk is tidy, after the wreck from yesterday was cleared away.
The remaining sheets from my paper transformed experiments is there. All quite different, but they also share elements. I can’t pick a favourite. If you recall, after the first layer or so, just paint, scraped and brayered and kissed by the gel plate, they looked like this:
By the end of it, well, very different. Layer and layers later:
You SHOULD be able to click to see a bigger image, but you tell me if that works LOL! Do bear in mind these were always meant to be cut up so there is no “direction” per se, and nothing is the “wrong” way round. 🙂
So there we go, short and sweet, like I said. Oh, except Dear Son sent a couple of photos of …. no pet name for Cat yet (fat cat?) so just this:
As I mentioned, this week is pretty crammed with commitments. I managed a very short play session, because I just needed it. I really wanted to complete the sheets from last week. I finished one, and used it on the pop-up cube, but I really wanted to finish the final three in one go. I did, and am happy with the results, but I did a really poor job of capturing the process. My desk, floor and side-desk are a literal catastrophe.
I WILL tidy this up for WOYWW (late last week but I did visit every desk so feel like I did an OK job with that!) because I need to before I can do anything else! I am meant to be making some tags for a swap, but I have not yet heard back from my swap-mate. She has never posted on the group that I can see, other than to say she would participate in the swap, has not replied to my message asking to exchange addresses, and the stuff is meant to be sent by the end of the month. DOH! I think I will use what is left from the pop-up cube to make the tags, even if I never hear from her. Maybe someone else might be willing to trade, maybe even a UK person….
The whole sheetWhat I have left
I really like it and the piece is pretty big (about 9 x 9 ish) so plenty to work with. Lucky I snapped a shot before my desk devolved into the chaos at the top. Yeesh. Bear with me, it’ll get cleaned for tomorrow.
scrappystickyinkymess 