Stamps Ahead

This layout is for a challenge over at Soul Scrappers . More about that later. The challenge was to use a close up photo of your eye/eyes on your page and to include a quote about eyes. My selfie photos were taken whilst I was getting ready for the wedding of a young lady I have known since the day she was born. I was staying in an apartment close to the wedding venue. I looked in the bathroom mirror and my first thought was "oh no it is true I have square eyes! What my mother used to say to us as kids came true!". Of course, that was a what we would now call an "old wives tale". In fact, what I saw was my reflection in the square mirror...an optical illusion!" Here is a one of the photos so that you can see those square eyes of mine - wow that sounds like a song title! My layout was initially inspired by a photograph in Art Journal Freedom a book by Dina Wakley...see below.    Whilst she used paints I got out my gel plate and acrylic paints...

Here are several of the little notebooks I have made using my gel plate prints.  I love that I am able to use the prints and not have them sitting around. I have made them for fundraiser to be held later in the year.  The mini notebooks my sister purchased overseas. Thank you for looking, Margaret.

Here I have been playing with my gel plate again - should have been cleaning up the table - but guess what was on that said table? Yes, my gel plate so I got distracted!  Nothing new.  Here is a card I created with today's efforts.  Using masks to create trees. I love the multiple layers of colour I created.  This time I used the little tubes of acrylic paint to get the background and added white to tone down the colour.  When I was happy with my background I then applied masks of triangles/trees  to pull off some of the colour.  To finish off I highlighted the shapes with black marker, used a stencil to get the circles and then coloured with crayons (I had loads of packets of watercolour crayons so went with those).  Finally, a little bit of glossy accents over the circles and 'joy' stamp as it has a 'christmassy' feel to it. Here is a close up showing the glossy accents: I was inspired by a blog post I found by Itsamistry Desi...

There is currently a challenge over at Soul Scrappers to create a layout with the theme Travel. Here is what I came up with: One of my most favourite places to travel is to Disneyland/Disney themed parks.  This photo was taken at Disneyland in California, USA last year. In my last post I had photos of my experiments with my gel plate.  I used the pink/purple prints I made. The stamps, papers and chipboard are from Kasazz. The stencil was in my stash. I was inspired by a layout I saw on Pinterest to create the squares and place onto card stock. Of course, I cannot find the layout despite several hours once again searching for it and getting distracted by all the inspiration out there. I really like the finished layout and I hope you do as well. Thank you for looking, Margaret

This is a long post.  Hope you stay with me. What is a gel plate I hear you ask - unless you have used these previously you may wonder what they are.  Straight from the web is this description "gel printing plates look and feel like gelatin, but are durable, reusuable and store at room temperature. They are easy to clean and always ready for printing." I recently went to a gel plate workshop, held at Time to Create in Modanville (near Lismore NSW). The tutor was Birgit Koopsen from The Netherlands.  Whilst I had a great time playing with my gel plate, inks, stamps, Pan Pastels and more, I realized that I needed to get a better grip on the basics.   So that is what I did today.  How come today? Last week, this week and for the next two weeks I am leading ladies to make cards in Mt Colah, NSW.  Dianne, my friend, said are you going to show the ladies how you used your gel plate? So that is how I decided to play today and you never know I may end up getti...