GPP Crusade No 39 – Pulling Prints

Michelle Ward, at the helm of the Green Pepper Press Street Team Crusades, has raised the bar, yet again. This month we have been challenged to Pull Prints, with monoprinting. Now, I have tried monoprinting before and been left disappointed with the results, but I have faith in Michelle and was willing to give it a go again.

First I gathered my supplies. I don’t have any Tyvek, so I used scrap paper, then some of the cereal box inserts.

I decided for the base to use come cardboard covered with cereal box plastic. My first prints were a little too wet and splodgy.

Then I found a large sheet of glass and decided to give that a go. Again, the initial prints were too wet and the red paint was very thick. As more prints were pulled, the texture get more interesting.

Third try with less red paint and on top of the previous paint on the glass.

By this time I was getting a little weary. I cut a heart from plastic film, added a bit more red paint and gave it one last go…

These were the first two, as per Michelle’s instructions. Then I “repainted” the glass and tried again…

I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. Lessons learned:

1. Get everything ready before you begin, including paper towel to clean off the glass when changing colours

2. Have LOTS of card stock on hand

3. Read Michelle’s instructions first, rather than while the paint is drying on the glass

4. Have fun playing and try not to get too stressed when it doesn’t look just like Michelle’s

Now I have to go and clean up my mess – well, I am letting all of the prints dry first…

Thanks again to Michelle and all the members of the Street Team.

*smiles*
Michelle

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GPP Crusade No 36 – Braving the elements

The Green Pepper Press Crusade has returned for 2010 to Brave the Elements. Now these northern hemisphere girls are braving the cold of winter and thinking of snowflakes. Snowflakes!?! I think I may have seen snow once – brrrrr! too cold for me!

Here we are braving the summer elements; scorching hot sun, blustery northerly winds that dry your eyes out and still in the middle of a drought. And my Tomato Jungle is surviving in these conditions.

I had an absolute ball creating this today and am very pleased with the results. I think I have stuck to the one hour time frame, although not in all one sitting. Can you see the ripening tomatoes peeking out? They take so long to turn red, even in this heat. Here are some more of the details.

The stencils were cut from scrap paper, using a real tomato leave as a template. I had one that was much bigger but it was just too big for the layout. The tomatoes were stenciled using a 1″ hole punch to create that template.

The stenciling with gesso didn’t give much contrast and neither did the light green, but the dark green paint provided the best contrast against the background.

I’ll include some details on creating the background and the gesso resistance technique over at the Mixed Media Art site.

Thank you once again goes to Michelle Ward to helping us to rise to the challenge and sharing her passion for simple techniques that give stunning results! And for giving us a time frame! No excuses this time.

*smiles*

Michelle

GPP – Crusade No. 25 Gesso

I’m back for this month’s GPP Street Team Crusade! This month is all about Gesso and it’s fabulous properties for creating resistance paint backgrounds. I’ve used Gesso a little before and had discovered some of its properties by accident. This is a great chance to delve a further into the sticky white “paint” with deliberation, rather than through sheer fluke!

Firstly I found a nice clean spread that already had some Gesso on one page, where I’d wiped off the brush from another project (I just HATE wasting that last bit of paint on brushes). I have a paint brush dedicated to Gesso, so I added some more with a criss-cross pattern [right hand side]. On the other page I stamped some swirls (from Buzz and Bloom) with Gesso brushed on. This was left to dry completely.

First Layer with Gesso

Next some purple and red acrylic paints were applied randomly across the two pages. I was a bit impatient here (and painting on the floor as my art table is such a mess!) so the colours are a bit too blotchy. I then squirted the pages with some water and used paper towel to swish some off. This worked better when I left the water to sit for a while – it created the whitish spaces on the RHS. I also found that the paints blended better over the Gesso background.

After paint and water spray was applied

The left-hand side didn’t work as well – that didn’t have any undercoat, so the paint tended to adhere to the page and the stamped swirls, rather that create a true resist. Next time I’ll paint with acrylics first, then add the Gesso images.  The RHS came up really well. Here is a close up:

Close-up pic of resisted area

You can still see the criss-crossed Gesso underneath. I have found that the underlying brush strokes in the Gesso often show through, so you need to keep that in mind.

Yet again Michelle Ward has created another fantastic artistic challenge – looking forward to many more into the New Year.

Hope all of your Christmas crafting projects are progressing well (that’s where I’m off to next!)

Michelle

GGP Crusade No.19 – Stencils

April’s GPP Street Team Crusade this month is Stencils; what fun! how easy! fantastic results! Here’s what I did.

1. Decided on a large flower, which can be used as a stencil and mask/template. As I’m doing more altered book layouts, I need bigger images than I had been using. I created one petal, folded in half to get symmetry. I then used this one to create seven in total. I stuck these to the back of my cutting mat with on/off tape. Each petal is about 2″, the whole flower, just over 6″ across.

2. Using a recycled beauty product box (knew it would come in handy for something!) I traced the flower onto the plastic sheet with a Sharpie pen, then cut out with a craft knife (didn’t even know you could get a “Stencil burning tool” until Michelle told us!) This gave me a stencil and a template for each petal. I numbered each petal and template so I could line them up later, if need be (I AM an engineer, remember, lol)

3. To use the stencil for a layout, I used chalk ink and a sponge to lay down the bottom layer onto a prepared page. Using each template, I cut out text and music and an old engineering maths book (oooh) and sponged one side with the same chalk ink. As the templates have writing on them, it made it easier to line up the petals, so the text or music would be straight in the final design. Stuck the petals on with Xyron. Added text “Stillness”, which was the theme from this morning’s meditations, a border and petal highlights with a Tombow pen.

There, all done! I’m pleased with the outcome; quite tranquil. I might add that the reason I’ve got so much time to create and meditate at present, is that my company is out on strike, so I’ve had lots of time on my hands.

Hope you find some time to create, and be still!

Michelle

[Editors Note: For more uses of this flower stencil, see Disappearing Act – Sept 2011]