Gel Medium Background with Brentwood Owl

Today I'm happy to announce that I have been selected to be a part of the fabulous Design Team at JessicaLynnOriginal.com. I'm thrilled and excited to be a part of such a fun and cute stamp design company, and a great design team group of gals!!

One of JessicaLynnOriginals' signature stamp designs is Brentwood Owl. So I created this super cute Seahawks greeting card using him (isn't he adorable!?!) in a 12 shirt.


Brentwood Owl 
What FUN to color!! I printed him out and used my copics in varying E tones, Y and YR tones and B tones paired with my colorless blender (to create highlights) to make him pop and give him depth. Then I cut Brentwood out and set him aside.

Creating a Background
To create the colorful background I chose a stencil I really liked, the 6x6 Mini Tiny Circles Stencil from Balzer Designs for TCW. I taped my craft sheet down (I use the Tim Holtz craft sheet, but for this project wax paper or scratch paper would work fine - you just want to protect your table surface.) Then I taped my paper down with washi tape (any low-tac tape would work) and positioned the stencil as I liked it over my paper and taped it down as well. I didn't want anything to move while I was working!


Next I pulled out my Gel Medium 


and applied it over the stencil with my finger. (*Note: if you have never used Gel Medium before, its a pretty cool product. Its considered an acrylic, comes in Regular, Soft and Heavy and the finishes come in Matte, Gloss and Semi-Gloss. Its used to build and create texture, as a collage glue or as a super-strong binder. When added to acrylic paint it will extend the drying time, and some people even use it for photocopy transfers.) Gel Medium can be expensive, so use sparingly. After you finish applying the Gel Medium, lift the stencil off of your project.

Get Inky!
I love Designer Paper, but I love creating my own backgrounds more. I picked out three to four main Dylusion Ink Spray colors spraying them over the paper. I let it dry.


Then I took a damp cloth and wiped away the Gel Medium. Remove the tape, trim your piece, a voila ici! A beautiful, unique and colorful background!


I mounted the background on some silver paper and attached Mr. Brentwood over the splotch where I was experimenting with application of the Gel Medium. (*Note: its better to pat Gel Medium on with the finger than to wipe it on with a craft palette knife.)

Creating the Speech Bubble
Next I created the word bubble with my Stampin Up! Decorative Label punch and spelled out the sentiment with my alphabet stamps. I distressed the edge of the punch out with Momento Olive Grove ink and popped it up with dimensionals.

Divine Twine
I ran my divine twine through some molding paste, attached one end to the back of the punch out with tape, wound the twine into a loop and attached it to Brentwood Owl's hand and set it aside to dry.

And I'm done! Such a cute and fun card, so much fun to make. I hope you all give these techniques a try and enjoyed seeing how I created this cute card.


Have you tried any of these techniques before? Got something to add? Leave me a comment below and let me know!
Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Comments

  1. Jessica Frost-BallasSeptember 19, 2014 at 10:35 PM

    Rachael, I LOVE your card! And that background looks awesome! I've never worked with gel medium before...is it similar to embossing paste or texture paste? And is the purpose of wiping it off with a damp cloth to remove all the texture and leave the color behind or am I missing something? I can't wait to learn more about it! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RachaelSeptember 20, 2014 at 12:08 PM

      Thanks Jessica! Gel Medium is super fun to work with. It is similar to embossing paste except that it is designed for use with acrylics and therefore takes longer to dry (giving you more time to work with it.) I use the Gel Medium as a resist so that when I spray the dylusions inks, the area with the Gel Medium won't be sprayed with color. You remove the medium so you end up with the neat design with the color and the white where the medium was placed. I hope that helps! :)

      Delete
    2. RachaelSeptember 20, 2014 at 12:14 PM

      You might also try Gesso in place of Gel Medium!

      Delete
  2. Jessica Frost-BallasSeptember 20, 2014 at 12:43 PM

    Hmm having issues commenting...hopefully you won't have three from me. Anyway, so you spray the color on when the gel is still wet...then when the spray is dried you wipe off the still wet gel. Is that right?

    ReplyDelete

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