Art Journal Page: Kindness is like snow

Posted on 4th December 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve been forced by circumstances this week to not have a creative outlet, and I’ve come to realise that’s not a good idea! I’ve snatched time though, today, to practice the Gelli Plate technique I’ll be teaching in my Art Journaling Session on Monday evening. There will be spaces available – if you’d like to come, just get in touch.

[Monoprint panels using Chipped Sapphire/Stormy Sky Distress Paints and white acrylic paint; background from cleaning the brayer; text in Posca white acrylic marker.]

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ZIA on other surfaces: monoprinting

Posted on 2nd February 2015 by perfectly4med

I’ve just taken delivery of my 3×5″ Gelli Arts Plate, which is the perfect size to have a go at a technique I wanted to test for my forthcoming Zentangle Inspired Art workshop. I mixed black acrylic with a slow medium in equal quantities and used a brayer to cover the plate evenly with the black paint. Working as quickly as I could, I scraped paint off with a rubber tipped tool to ‘etch’ the tangle design. Despite the speed at which I worked, the acrylic still dried, so by the end I was scraping into dried paint, and to transfer the monoprint to paper I needed to add a layer of matt multi medium over the dried paint. After everything had dried on the page, I added Distress Inks to colour. A fast and furious sample, but a technique I think I will try again, perhaps with Golden Open acrylics or even a waterbased printing ink.

Have a go at this technique, along with others, at my workshop on Easter Saturday.

On a separate note, it is worth having a look at my original image – which was taken with a camera – the gloss finished of the acrylic played havoc with the light… Whereas the scanned image above shows off the piece far better. There’s also some resist happening with the black and the multi-medium which adds to the texture.

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Greeting Card Art Journal

Posted on 15th December 2014 by perfectly4med

I’m meant to be recording tutorial videos this week, but have been kindly handed a cold and laryngitis… so I’m catching up with some of the things that don’t need a voice to action! This is another project that has sat in the corner of the studio for most of the year that I decided to finish for my altered art demo day last week. I’ve upcycled various greeting cards that were saved from birthdays and Christmases into a functional and hard wearing art journal.

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Gelli Print Trio – New Home Cards

Posted on 15th April 2013 by perfectly4med

I needed to stay awake yesterday evening, so turned off the TV, got off the sofa and disappeared down the garden to the studio. A couple of friends have recently moved house, so I decided to make them new home cards, which took about an hour (including tidying up after, which I’m determined to keep doing!):

The backgrounds are mono prints using my Gelli Arts printing plate, layering up lots of different acrylic paint colours through stencils, sequin waste and removing paint with bubble wrap and foam stamps. I overprinted with white acrylic using the Claudine Hellmuth ‘Dwelling’ foam stamp, then outlined with her clear stamp set and Archival Jet Black ink. The sentiment is from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous ‘Simple Sayings’ [CMS155] printed in Archival Jet Black and mounted on background offcuts to tie it all together. I outlined areas using a Signo white gel pen (fine tip) just to help define some of the detail.