This is our third year of Lauren & I playing with Gel Press Printing at our New Jersey Art Camp (aka playing with art supplies at her house). For my birthday, Lauren bought me a set of the R&F Opaque Oil-based Pigment Sticks that Sally MacDonald assured would produce successfull Fashion Magazine Transfers … but alas we failed.
We could see the lovely print on our Gel Press surface … but we couldn't get it to pick-up on the paper. Here are the only two reasonable prints I achieved from the technique. At least we were doing it together … and failing together … so we didn't get nearly as frustrated if we had been failing alone.
Of course we didn't let that stop us … Lauren moved on to other play with the oil sticks, and I moved on to playing with paints.
I had several large new stencils from Carabelle Studio I wanted to try … but I mostly became obsessed with Carabelle Studio Art Mask Large – Collection of Circles (Accumulation de Ronds).
When I Gel Print, I tend to do a variation on a theme … and clearly I buy my paints from the same family too … I need to add some reds and greens to my color palette.
Next I moved on to Darkroom Door Large Polka Dot Stencil with the same paints (mostly on white cardstock but a few texty pages).
I really felt like I needed more primary colors, so I borrowed some red paint from Lauren (note to self, buy red paint).
I had fun printing on some vintage papers, water color paper and even some index cards using some zig zags and dots.
Seriously, I'm not sure there is a more therapeutic creative process than printing layers upon layers … and doing it with your crafty besty (who will oooh and ahhhh with you as you pull magical prints) is the best.
woohoo – Stef & Lauren’s annual art camp is one of my favorite vicarious vacations! thanks so much for sharing, again 🙂