2015 #16 Secret Garden {by Alison Hall}

Topic 16: Circles

Hi everyone Alison/Craftytrog here, joining you this evening with a card, which features a background made with the 4" Round Gelli Plate. This Gelli Plate is my favourite, I'm just mad about using circles in my art right now, and it makes fabulous layered backgrounds, especially when you use bubble wrap! I also used one of my fave new Hotpicks, HP1504, you can guess that this is a favourite of mine, with all those circles, not to mention that brilliant face with the birds on branches hair!

Step One: To make the background for my card, I used the 4" Round Gelli Plate like a stamp, so I first placed it onto a 6x6" stamp block. I chose 2 green Fresco Paints, Limelight & Hey Pesto, and 2 blues, Beach Hut & South Pacific. For each print of the Gelli Plate, I used a brayer to apply a small dot of paint onto the plate, pressed a piece of bubble wrap into it, then stamped it onto a sheet of White Smoothy Card.

Step Two: I used each paint colour individually, overlapping the prints, and stamping all over the card, until my background looked like this. For my card background, I cut a piece approximately 5.5" square.

Step Three: Next, I used black archival ink to stamp some collage flower shapes from HPXT02, onto white tissue. I also used black stazon ink to stamp 3 of the face collage from HP1504, onto shrink plastic. I used a pre-sanded piece of shrink plastic, as this makes it easier to stamp onto, but you could use a sanding block to sand a clear piece yourself.

Step Four: When the ink was completely dry, I cut out the faces from the shrink plastic, then painted them on the stamped sides thinly with South Pacific, Hey Pesto and Snowflake Fresco, before shrinking them with a heat gun. This way the clear un-sanded side of the faces will be the fronts.

Step Five: I used black archival ink to stamp the birds & branches border from HP1005, onto white tissue (3 times), tore it out, and used multi medium matte to adhere it along the bottom of my background. I stamped just the stem part of the dandelion from HP1005 three times for my flower stems. I also stamped the circle border from HP1504 around the edges. I cut out 3 medium and 3 small tissue flower collages, crumpled them up, and layered them with the shrink plastic heads. On a spare piece of background, I stamped the book plate from HP1504 & the quote from HP1005, then cut it out, and inked the edges with black archival.

Step Six: I used glossy accents to adhere the flowers, and black brads to attach the bookplate quote. Covering up the flowers and quote, I flicked watered down Little Black Dress Fresco Paint, using a round paintbrush. I decided the flowers needed something extra, so I stamped the face collage from HP1504 onto white smoothy card 3 times, cut out the eyes, and used glossy accents to adhere them to the faces. 

I finished my card by mounting my artwork onto black card, then attaching it to a 7x7" white card blank.

Those flowers made me so happy, especially after I added the eyes! Lol! In hindsight, I would have added less black paint splatters, I do tend to get carried away sometimes! Anyway, I hope I've inspired you to dig out that round Gelli Plate if you have one, and make some colourful backgrounds. It's addictive! The translucent Fresco paints work really well for this technique, as you can make other colours when they overlap.

Have a  creative day!

Alison x

Blog: Craftytrog's Inky Adventures
Facebook: Alison Hall
Twitter: @craftytrog

OMG Alison. this had me laughing so much..love those heads in the flowers!! And the gelli BG is fabulous with those great layers of colour and printing like that looks so much fun! Thanks for making my day! ~Leandra

Did you know that you can play along with us on the PaperArtsy blog to share and explore with us how you interpret the current theme. The current topic is Circles, and if you are inspired by any of our contributors on the blog this 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 Circles challenge link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Sept 6th, and the winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.