Growing In Unity Day 4

It's almost the weekend and my Friday! Today I am going to focus on a technique from my early mixed media days, but it's a good one. I'm using heavy gel as a resist against spray inks. It creates really cool backgrounds.

Gather supplies. I chose Sending Up Something Beautiful for my stamp set, so I used a cloud stencil. The process works great with texture stencils as well. Be sure to use heavy gel as you need the stiffness to hold the shapes of the stencil.

Hold down your stencil, I use my magnetic mat and magnets, but you could also use painter's tape, you just don't want it moving around.

Apply a nice thick layer of the gel over the entirety of the stencil or the sections you wish to fill in.

Smooth out as much as possible. Remove stencil, set aside to air dry. If you're really impatient, you can place it in a warm oven to speed the process up, but I just set it aside and work on the rest of of my bits to add on top. Be sure to wash your stencil right away as the dried gel can damage it.

 

Whilst my gel is drying, I prepare the rest of the parts for the card. I stamped images on scrap pieces of watercolor paper, painted, cut them out.

Once the gel is dry, spray the paper with desired spray inks. No need to cover completely because you'll add water to spread out the ink and wash the gel clear.

Dry with heat tool to keep colors from mixing and muddying the colors. You can see the gel clouds wicking away the ink.

It really makes a cool effect. I've not used it with the cloud stencil, but will soon again!

I added the rest of my elements, doily, hot air balloon, clouds, sentiment and have a finished card!

Be sure to comment each day to have a chance to win one of two grab bags of Unity stamps; see you tomorrow for my last day!

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