Gel Press meets Colour Shimmer Dust with Melinda

Hello, hello and welcome to the blog today!!

I'm going to start this post will a little confession!! Last June I attended the Brisbane Craft Show and purchased a Gel Press plate - I couldn't wait to get home and PLAY!! When I finally did play, let's just say I was less than impressed with my end results so I put the press away with every intention of trying again "one day." Well, that one day is here so I grabbed said gel press, white acrylic paint, ALL of my Colour Shimmer Dusts, brayer, stencils and paper and off I went!

I started by mixing my paint with my first colour choice of Peacock Colour Shimmer Dust. I mixed this well with a palette knife and applied to my plate with my brayer. I then grabbed my first piece of cardstock and pressed that straight onto the top rubbing firmly to get an impression.

Depending on how thick you do the paint and how much you press you can get multiple prints from the same paint layer. 

Please remember, I was simply playing and I think I still have a long way to go!! I continued with the same technique a couple of times and then decided to add another colour for another layer.

Next up was Paris Colour Shimmer Dust. I did not clean my "palette" so got a deeper green than the Paris by itself would be. I was having so much fun brayering and pressing that I forgot to get a photo of that particular layer however you can see the colour in the next step.

I decided to try adding a completely different colour and this time grabbed the Sunflower Colour Shimmer Dust and white acrylic. You can see the left overs of the Paris on the plate to the left of the photo.

I added in some stencils using  the stencil almost like a stamp and impressing the stencil into the wet paint, removing the stencil and moving it all around the plate and then doing another impression for another layer of colour.

Each time I changed colour families I cleaned my gel plate. Also when I decided to add in the yellow I actually grabbed some old acetate/packaging to create a palette to mix the colour and apply to my brayer.

I couldn't resist trying some pink so grabbed my Lollipop Colour Shimmer Dust and got mixing. I applied a layer of that to my plate and then did a little experiment. I grabbed my Sunflower Dust and sprinkled that in couple of places on the wet paint on the gel plate, added a small blob of acrylic, brayered that and then did an impression. This gave an intesting, much more saturated, effect to the areas where the Dust hadn't completely mixed in.

By this stage I had done a number of prints and thought I should stop then and see what I had. I had also experimented yesterday to see if I could get my idea of Colour Shimmer Dust and acrylic to work so there a couple of extra book pages I did a couple of extra impressions on those. I chose some of the prints I thought I could work with and cut them down to card front size (10cm x 14.3cm) and here are the bases I cut. I also had enough from one of the prints to do 2 10cm square fronts as well. 

I picked 3 I wanted to work with added a couple of more layers! Starting with Colour Paste in Bling to 2 of the card fronts.

When that was dry (I did give it a bit of a head start with the heat gun!) I added in some stamping with gold ink and also black ink. I also inked around all of the edges of the cards to give them a little bit of a defining edge.

I grabbed a few embellishments from my stash - Charms Creations, D-lish Scraps and Funky Flair Studio's mostly - and stuck those on and mounted my card fronts onto cream card bases.

And a photo of each

If you know me well chances are you can pick my fave is the star one. Do you have a favourite??

I have filmed my process which will give you a better idea of the actual process (and just how messy I got ;) ) which you can see here. 

Now that I have broken the printing plate in I can't wait to do some more playing and printing!! Do you have a gel plate you've been "meaning to get to"? Have a play, it is FUN!!

I hope you enjoyed this and I'd love for you to share if you create something inspired by this so please head over the Colour Blast Creative Corner on FB and share away!!

Until next time, happy scrapping!!

Melinda