2015 #15 Magical Mediums {by Lynn Price}

 2015 Topic 15: Gels and Mediums

Hi, Lynn Price here! I am so honored PaperArtsy has asked me to play around with various mediums for this post. I am a nursing professor here in Connecticut, and have recently discovered mixed media as a fun way to re-charge by creating something unique using an entirely different part of my brain - working with various mediums satisfies all of that!

Today I am playing with a two-page journal layout . 

For this layout, I played with three mediums: Regular gel medium (matte) (familiar to most of us, but used here also as more of a faux encaustic technique), glass bead gel, and Clear Tar Gel (from Golden) – Liquitex calls it's version of this product string gel.

I started with card stock heavily sponged with Distress Ink in warm colors. I die cut dragonflies, butterflies and bees and applied with these gel medium to gessoed pages with a few dry embossed bits which created a light yellow and orange background from the ink reacting to the medium. After stamping with Paper Artsy Mini 44, I then covered most of the plain (non-embossed) die cuts with extra gel medium, to really blend them into the background.

Mini 44

Next I stamped with the end of a beautiful Lynne Perrella stamp from LPC28  in archival ink to create additional detail and added more gel medium.

LPC28

Then I swiped Golden's Bead Gel with my finger in areas that I thought would pool when I sprayed on the final colors. Because of the gel medium already on the surface, the distress inks on the die cuts no longer react. I love the effects of the beads – so shimmery!

After spraying the two pages with various colors of distress inks, I used the end of a thin paintbrush to write and draw, by dipping into the clear tar gel like a pen. This medium not only dries clear, but is also self-leveling, so small areas originally left open will likely fill in (like the loop in a small “e”, for instance). Here you can see how the clear tar gel indeed dries clear, so that the stamping and colors underneath come straight through - can you see the word “Love” ?

Below is one more close up, showing the beautiful beads after spraying, as well as the phenomenal effect from the Clear Tar Gel on stamping and background color. I have more examples on my blog if you’d like to see more of this finish.

This was such a fun make, that I actually made another one, with clear tar gel which you can see on my blog Experiments in Paper, along with more details of this layout. 

Lynn. 

Welcome Lynn and thankyou for creating such a fun page. You have show just how versatile the gels are, from regular 'sticking' to adding the shimmer and texture of the beads and the dreamy, fluidity of the tar gel. Indeed magical. ~Darcy

We would love you to join in with challenge #15: Gels If you are inspired by any of our guests who blog with us over the fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Gels link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Aug 23rd winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.