Flowers are smiles

My latest addition is to my Gel Plate - there is an unlimited amount of fun to be had printing your own backgrounds and making a whole range of things! This month I have made two different backgrounds for my large Journal using the same equipment.
Before I start, a couple of things to note: I made this on a really hot day so I wasn't able to photograph everything as the paint was drying so quickly! The second is that my plate had some pits on the surface after I'd washed it. These have since disappeared - so ignore the 'bubble' effect on the first few photos! You won't have this one your plate and I haven't experienced this since.

My first step was to brayer a layer of Caribbean Sea paint to the surface - you don't need a lot of paint as you can repeat any of the steps to cover your paper.

Lay your page on the paint and rub the back of the paper to transfer the paint to the paper. Then peel your paper off the plate.

This is my first print.

I then made a second print using Teresa Green.

Then I added a white (Snowflake) layer. I tend to add a layer of colour and then a layer of white. I like the layers of colours - think lots of layers of wallpaper in an old house!

You don't have to add paint to the whole of the surface of your plate, here I added Bougainvillea to a small areas on the plate. You can, of course, put paint on the plate and only put part of your paper on the plate; rotate the paper so you don't always use the same part of the plate on the same part of the paper and print as many layers as you like.

So, that's my base. Now to add some stencilling! On the plate, lay your stencil and brayer paint through.

This is what that stencil looks like.

This is Tracks in Banana

And this is Gothic in Slate

This is the finished page, trimmed and with Vintage Photo Distress Ink around the edges.

To finish the page off I used lots of Zinski Art stamps

Thank you for popping by - my second page using these paints and stencils will be here next week!

Gabrielle x