I seem to have fallen into the trap of endless play days with nothing that you can call real finished pieces. Gel prints I love bit haven’t used for anything, endless experimental pulls that are piling up, just so so much stuff.
I am making a conscious effort the make stuff. So I had a play with those bits of card I pulled from the mostly dried up paints and made some tags. I always need things for extras in a swap envelope, or Happy Mail , and these will fit the bill quite nicely. The UK tags I get are not huge and I wanted to use the hole protectors too so I punched them out, then covered the tags with the papers.
I used bits and bods from my desk t decorate, including chopped up sheets of my various word printables and some collage fodder.
I ended up making six of them and in the process had a bit of an idea for a set of printables based on the two-word combos I ended up using. They should be fun and I’ll sort them in a couple different fonts then share them with you all. I like the idea of drawing “one from column A, one from column B” to get an odd and maybe surprising phrase to then build a piece around – tag, ATC, art journal page, whatever.
So if you saw yesterday’s post, you know I have been attempting to bring back to life some very old, slightly dried out paints I got second-hand many, many years ago. I did manage to get some useful stuff out of them by wiping the knitting needle I used to stir in the water (trying to re-hydrate them) on my 5×7 gel plate and pulling a simple print, either by adding a bit of texture, or even by just spreading it with the brayer and picking it up.
I actually got some pretty prints, and the final pick up one from everything dried on the plate I think is a stunner!
I rather like this one as well!
The best pick-up print from a plate that looks kinda meh.
I mean looking at it you wouldn’t think I could get much off it, but:
I cannot tell you how pretty it is IRL. Soft and grungy with a hint of texture, and little flashes of metallic paint here and there. I don’t know what to do with it but I think scanning it is step one! I will never get over the difference between a scan and a photo
I am still leaving the paints to sit and giving them an occasional shake, but will hope to find time for a proper play this weekend!
Now, you will have to go back a full decade ago to see the first time I made one of these. It is a page protector, sliced in strips, front one way back the other, that I use to flip and flop and mask of areas of the gel plate, when printing. The washi tape just makes it easier to see the slices.
The idea is to roll out the paint, flip over the vinyl, and print. You can easily add texture to get interesting overlapped areas
And the paint trapped below the vinyl can then be used on the main print (left) or a secondary one (right)
and the mop up prints have just a hint of the lines, which I think makes them interesting in their own right.
The final piece looks like this
and you can see I made use of that sheet of ATC mark-making elements on it for some final drama!
I thought as the 12×12 page protector isn’t QUITE big enough to use with the 12×12 plate, I might try making another version with contact paper instead. I have some ideas, as do some of the folks in my artist group. I will be interested in seeing how it all develops.
Oh man this was fun. Totally unplanned, totally unexpected, but I love, love, love the results. If you recal the stencil looks like this
It was just all a bit random, but I totally loved it from the first moment I made it. Yesterday’s post details the process I went thru, converting it from hot glue to a cut stencil and I wanted to get some paint on it right away. I had been playing with some other stuff, had a bit of paint on the gel plate, and made a few rather random pulls just to use it and kinda coat it. I did some brown, cause it was on my desk, and some turquoise, and some copper, and just pulled the paint with some cut bits, thinking … well I don’t know what really. I really liked theone on deli paper, which picke dup the paint within the stencil but also the paint stuck to the stencil.
I had been using my 12×12 plate as a palette and pulling some prints on the 5×7, so there was a bunch of random colours on the bi one. I had plopped the stencil down on it and then decided to just pull a print thru the stencil, which gave me this:
I just really liked the mix of colours, and when I removed the stencil I could see there was a lot of paint still trapped under it. A thin coat of white and I pulled all kinds of stuff that was on the 12×12, probably from a few sessions.
I mean, wow. It’s weird and wonderful and I love it.
And of course I had to scan it, because it always looks so different in a scan than a photo:
I think this is going to be fun to play with, and I really want to figure out the best use of this print. I feel like I need to cover something with it, or maybe use it in a collage. Ir maybe momigami it. I wonder if I could scan it and print it and momigami that? Ooh, that could be fun to try too!
I am not doing enough to make actual projects at the moment, just playing and having fun. But I will be in dange of becoming overrun with random prints if I don’t kind a way to actually USE them productively. Putting on my thnking cap…
This was interesting. I had made a hot glue…stencil? I mean, kinda? I think in reality it was more of a mask than a true stencil. I showed it on the last post where I used it on the envelope to mail my ATC swap items.
I really loved the organic shape of it but as a true stencil it was far too thick to really work. Where it was great if I laid it down on a paint-covered gel plat, and then removed it or removed paint from the openings. it really didn’t stencil well at all. I have always hankered after turning it into a proper stencil and once I got a Scan&Cut it seemed possible.
Now, I did buy the very oldest S&C on a Black Friday sale, so it is not the one with all the newest features. I suspect some of this would be easier with one of the newer machines. But it did work in the end. It was a process LOL!
I figured that the hot glue piece was paint-covered so I was probably going t be able to scan it. And I could. But first I really needed to remove all the little glue threads.
Then I just plunked it on my scanner and scanned it. I did convert it to a B&W scan and tweaked the settings to get a dark clear image.
I think you can see that the scan of the paint covered glue was not perfect.
In the end I popped it into Affinity Photo to refine the design, remove some little weird areas, and clean up specks. That gave me a pretty clean image.
I ran into some issues there. Weird stuff. I was able to easily add the .jpg and auto trace it, perfectly fine, great job. But when I transferred it over to the S&C I couldn’t resize it at all. I had to go back to the computer, rotate it, resize it to fit the transparency film I was using to cut the stencil, and then transfer it over again. That sorted that, but it is something I need to bear in mind.
My first cut was not deep enough. For laser jet transparency film I need a cut pressure of 3 (speed of 5 works fine) which is deeper than what is indicated on the chart that came with my machine. This is the second error in the documentation (the other one was using sticker paper on the mat, which totally destroyed it where it needed to be re-stuck) which aggravates me. But I did end up with a fine stencil that I am very keen to use. I think I really need to use it a lot, letting the acrylic paint dry on it between uses, so I can SEE it, and so it has more tooth. I cannot wait to play with it….
Just a chaotic selection of stuff I have been playing with, while still not feeling 100% yet.
Where to begin? Let’s start with a further Teal+Purple play and a technique I played with first in 2013. Yikes. A full decade ago. Mixing up mic and glitter with gloss (or matte) medium then adding it thru a stencil on the gel plate
You don’t need much and mixing well is the real key. But it resulted in some interesting prints.
The last one, I laid the stencil over the clean gel plate then used a baby wipe to “clean it” – this forced a little pigment and a little mica/glitter into the opening which I was then able to pick up. All of them look much better in real life, I promise, the leaf in particular.
Then I also have a swap of ATCs I received, which was the first ATC swap I have done in AGES. I kinda miss it. Lovely getting art i the mail for sure. The envelope was very pretty too and totally going to end up as collage fodder.
And lastly, my own envelop for the swap items, where I used that glue-gun stencil I made ages ago.
Hard to see but man, I really like it. I am thinking of ways I might convert it into a stencil. I might be able to actually scan it, or I might be able to print with it maybe with black to make it into a cutting file? I don’t know – but I know it is something I will hope to play with over the weekend and maybe by Monday I will have found a solution!
This is the best I can do with my current brain fog from Covid. Still am not totally enjoying my coffee and when I do I will know my taste and smell have fully come back. I read it could take a YEAR. Ugh.
The original one I did, from the white-on-white paper turned out really sweet, I think.
I had a lot more to work with, frankly, because I had the foresight to scan the paper and work with that from the beginning. Note to self: even if you don’t LOVE it, SCAN IT! With the Green+Red I only had the bits trimmed off from the 12 x 12 sheet to create the weave. Now I think of it, if I could have cut a smaller card front, I bet I could have covered it – I just didn’t think of it!
I stuck the sentiment down too far to the left on the actual card so the white touches the white background, which is annoying, but this is one that goes in the emergency stash – when I need a card quick and am out of the top tier ones. It happens. Someone shows up with a card and you have to dash upstairs to “get the one you made” just for them but, well, you didn’t. A stack of pre-signed and with-envelope cards that one need a name scrawled on the front can be a lifesaver. So while this one may look a bit like the ugly step-sister of the group, it will do in a pinch!
I used one of the tips online for re-sticking the mat (spray adhesive) and it worked OK. Honestly, the more I read about how crap the Brother mats are and the more I use them, the more I agree. I am tempted by the tutorials that suggest using a Cricut mat cut and stuck to the brother one. I suspect you would need to do a test cut to get the pressure right but it sounds like it might work. I designed and cut a sheet of sentiments for cards using the Red & Green paper from last week. I think these will end my card-making or the holidays. I should have enough. These used the actual paper, not a scan. I really wanted the texture and painterly feel to be there, showing them as actual physical art, not an image of art.
In one area of the mat I had some bubbles from the spray adhesive, and that sentiment cut perfectly but would not let go of the mat. Not bad to have only one sacrificed to the cutting Gods. The big sentiment looked good on the background and there was enough to cover four cards
Simple enough. I designed the MERRY to be straight across, and used that to keep it aligned nicely.
It can be really hard to get them straight sometimes. Anyway I added a trio of gold sequins as well, just for that little bit of extra bling
If this had been a die, I might have cut a fun foam duplicate to pop it up a bit, but these might well be mailed (yeah, takinga chance there, given the state of the global post services lately) so lat is where it’s at!
There are some strips trimmed off to get to the 5 1/2″ square chunks I wanted to fit the card fronts, so I will play around with them to create a 5th card, I think. Might be OK, I’ll have to see. I did make a woven background from strips of the white-on-white scan and I really liked that a lot, so if I can, I may try that. I’ll share both if it turns out well. If not….crickets!
Dithering over what I will do over the holiday week between Xmas and New Year. I might go dark, I might bring back some old posts, I might have a massive spurt of creativity. I honestly don’t know. This year more than recent years, with Dear Son in residence, I feel like it will be precious family time to enjoy together. Between that and surely a ton of family Zooms or Facetimes, arty time might be in short supply. Not gonna lie, I’m looking forward to chilling out with a ton of sappy holiday movies (and Die Hard, much to Darling Daughter’s chagrin LOL!) and getting some cat cuddles in front of the tree. One more skating event before the big day, a Teams meeting for DD about a new project she might work on, a Holiday lunch with friends and a Dr. phone call. so not the most restful week.
Been a while since I did a colour challenge, but I wanted to play with traditional Christmas colours so I did.
Mostly Green + a bit of red. I allowed myself a metallic, gold.
I always begin with good overall coverage on the sheet, then touches of darker and/or lighter. I am loving brayer work too.
When it came to the red. I had a lot to choose from but I knew I wanted only one
For me, that was Pebeo 50 Primary Magenta. It’s not what I think of when I think of Magenta but hey ho… I added it using the scribbly circles from PMAS. Lots of them. And finally my favourite grid circle, the biggest one this time, for the touches of gold.
I really liked how the brayer skittered over the white dots (used punchinella for those in a previous layer) and really seemed to highlight them
This one was always destined to be cut up for cards, I just need to consider the topper. They are so chaotic with colour and pattern it feels like a simple word is all that is needed. I don’t need too many more, the postal strike means it is best to stick with hand delivered cards this year where possible, and increase my stash for another year.
Another skating performance – outside, in the cold, the Mixed Ability SPICE Synchro team were are the Windsor ice rink for a night. Brrrr. Cold just looking at the photo, but how festive!
I used that packing paper in a useful way. I had an old box, one of the ones with an insert for bottles, and I thought I had enough in that long strip to cover the whole thing. I got the box covered
but when I looked at the insert and what I had left…oh dear. Not enough! I reinforced the slotted together compartments and had a good think about it. Should I use other paper?
To be honest, unless you were looking down into the box from above, you are not going to see that not ever inch is covered, so I thought how best to cover as much as I could, In the end I cut the last piece into three strips and covered the top only. It covered enough of the insert that except from this angle, looking downward into the box, you don’t see it isn’t full coverage!
Washi tape neatened up the rough edges
and it makes the perfect storage for my rolls of embossed anaglypta wallpaper – a great texture tool for gel printing!
I used to have these tucked up on a high shelf and often forgot about them, but now they can stay out, neatly stored, and used a lot more. Win Win!
I did a bad job on WOYWW last week, very late. I am so hit or miss I am happy to let others claim the top spot. I’d feel awful if I was at Number 1 and didn’t get round for days. Tomorrow, who knows? Darling Daughter will be off at a skating event again (only one more after that between now and Christmas) so with luck I will be primed for desk hopping and ready to go!
scrappystickyinkymess 