Gelli Art Plates and CS Stencil Shapes

I'm still having fun with my gel printing plate from Gelli Arts, and this time I made a slew of manila tags with some fun, bright acrylic paint colors from Kay's stash.

The steps to create these tags are surprisingly easy and will transfer well to your pages, cards, and art journal projects.


Here's the drill:

1. Add blobs of acrylic paint to the geli plate and blend with a brayer. Don't be like me. Don't use way too much paint. Look at that mess. Ugggh.

2. Press and burnish tags onto the plate to transfer the paint. Use the brayer to blend as needed, and keep going until the paint is gone. Clean your plate and brayer. (And wipe off the drippy paint mess, too, Tricia.) Sit back and watch the paint dry. Switch the laundry loads.

3. Trace large, simple shapes onto the back of your favorite tags and cut with a scissors. You can also run the tag through a die cutting machine to create shapes. Here, I've used the Altered Panel Custom Shapes stencil to add a butterfly and a house shape to this tag.

4. To create a contrasting base for the shapes, paint tags in a solid coordinating color with simple brushstrokes. Allow the paint to dry and match a shape with each tag. You can also create some more neutral geli prints for the tag base.

5. Adhere the shape and draw around the outside edge with a fine-tipped marker. Draw around the image a second time. Crossing over the original line will add to the desired look. Caffeine helps. Finish the tag with a stamped sentiment and top with ribbon.

There is so much more that could be done with additional stamped images and embellishments, but I was quite happy with the simple look and chose to stop there.

Sentiment from the Fire & Ice Greeting UM.

Sentiment from the Tribal Art Nouveau UM.

Sentiment from the Tribal Borders & Backgrounds UM.

So . . . I thought I had this post all wrapped up. But I had more tags, and after sleeping on it, I decided to make this:

I followed the same technique as described earlier, but with Graffiti Black Smooth paper as the base, a white pen for outlining, and the Hopes stencil for the shapes.

Did this look difficult? It's not. See for yourself!

Happy Painting . . .
Tricia

2013 Retreat--A Noteworthy Project

Happy Saturday to all! Thanks to Kay for officially kicking off "Retreat Week" here on the blog yesterday.

Now that our August and October events are completed, and most of our Retreat in a Box participants have received their precious cargo, we, as Retreat Workshop instructors, can finally share the projects we've kept a secret for so long!

I had the pleasure of leading two of the awesome Workshops taught at this year's Retreat. The first was held after dinner Thursday night. Thursday usually involves a long day of travel for our guests, so we like to offer a unique and interesting but yet not-too-mentally-challenging project. Our Altered Composition Notebook workshop fit the bill perfectly!

This isn't just ANY composition notebook, mind you. Ours features 5x5 graph paper inside, rather than notebook lined pages. The graph paper is perfect for jotting down crafting notes or sketching out card and page ideas. In fact, if you have that layout sketch stencil from a few years back, it is scaled appropriately to work with this notebook. Pretty cool, eh?

We added another twist to the project by creating file folder tab-style dividers to separate the notebook into different sections . . . using the Envelope Punch Board of all things! Everyone really seemed to love having yet another use for their punch boards. Oh, and the addition of a  handy pen/pencil holder was pretty clever, too.

There are just a handful of Retreat in a Box packages left in our online store, so if you like what you see, you may want to act quickly. I hope you'll join us daily on the blog throughout the week next week as we celebrate all things Retreat.

SPECIAL INVITATION: On Saturday, November 9, we'll host a special Retreat Project Linky Party as a finale to "Retreat Week". So gather your completed Retreat projects (past or present, whether you attended Retreat or not), get 'em photographed, and prepare to share them here on the blog on Saturday for a chance at some yummy blog candy!

Creatively yours,
Karen

Re-purposed Frame

Happy Friday, Bloggers!

While doing some cleaning a while back (yes, that occasionally happens in my house), I came across an old 5x7 black frame with nothing inside. I placed it on my "projects that need to happen sometime" shelf in my basement. Then sure enough, I ended up filling it with inchies.

I took the frame apart and filled up the 5x7 space with rubber stamped, inked and embellished 1x1" inches. Then I put the frame back together.

I found that many of my past doodads from the Club Scrap embellishment cups worked well for embellishing.

To display, putting this frame on a little easel or hanging it on the wall would have worked just fine, but then I got the idea to make a stand out of a wooded candle holder from my local craft store. It just needed a little black paint before attaching the frame with bookbinding glue.

Although there was some assembly required, this was pretty easy and fun to make!

Creating inchies is such a fun "little" craft, and it's exciting to see what creative people do with those tiny works of art. Check out this Pinterest link if you care to do more of that.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend, and thanks for stopping by Club Scrap Creates!

Kay at Club Scrap