GELLI PLATE AND PACKING TAPE ... WHAT A FUN COMBINATION!

Hello and welcome to my blog on this beautiful Monday morning. 

continues at Simon Says Stamp for all of the month of September as we celebrate stamping with some really fun challenges and some exciting new products. 

This week, at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, we want you to stretch your imagination just a bit and stamp on something other than plain white cardstock!

I recently saw a very cool video on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog working with a Gelli Plate and packing tape.  It looked like so much fun that I decided to give that technique a try and stamp right onto the Gelli Plate using stamps and other items with shape and texture.

Here is my finished tag, using the backgrounds I made on the Gelli Plate and transferred to the packing tape. If you don't have a Gelli Plate, you seriously need to think about getting one! They are so much fun to play with! Here is the step by step of how I created this fun tag:

1. Begin by placing a few piece of torn paper strips onto your Gelli Plate.  (I was using an 8x10 Gelli Plate but a 6x6 one works great, too.) Choose a couple of contrasting acrylic paint colors and spread the colors over your Gelli Plate, using a soft rubber brayer.  Don't mix the colors too much or they may become muddy.  Just lightly blend them with the brayer and move on to the next step.

2. Remove the paper strips and create some interesting patterns on the paint.  I used a little rake to create wavy lines.

I also used a Q-Tip to create polka dots.  Let the paint dry before going on to the next step.

3. Stamp with paint instead of ink directly onto the Gelli Plate! Spread a little paint out onto a palette pad or a sheet of paper and then run the brayer over a stamp.  Then randomly stamp the pattern onto the Gelli Plate.  This plaid background stamp is from Wendy Vecchi's Sunshine And Art stamp set.

I even used a round plastic canvas piece that I had brayered paint onto.  In the picture above, you can see the wavy lines, the polka dots, the plaid paint, this plastic canvas being stamped and also a honeycomb stamp from Wendy Vecchi's Art For You stamp set that was stamped using a gold paint.

4.  Then go back over the clear polka dots with yet another color of paint and fill in the dots.

5. Finally, I used a jar lid that I had dabbed into black acrylic paint and randomly stamped it onto the Gelli Plate.  The design you see is the design you will get when you add the packing tape and transfer the design!  Let the paint dry completely before adding the packing tape over it!

6.  When the paint is dry, lay strips of packing tape side by side over the entire Gelli Plate surface.  Burnish the packing tape to the Gelli Plate using a bone folder or a used hotel key ... something with a flat edge.  Slowly begin peeling one end of the tape away from the Gelli Plate.  If a little of the paint stays on the Gelli Plate, just lay the tape back down, rub over it and lift it again.  This is a great way to remove the paint from your Gelli Plate, too! Remove all of the strips from the Gelli Plate in the same manner.  The photo above shows the different strips that are transparent; particularly in the areas where the torn strips of paper were originally placed.

7. Use aluminum foil, Perfect Pearls Powders (for these strips, I used Sunflower Sparkle and Blue Raspberry Perfect Pearls Powders) or Gold Leafing on the sticky side of the packing tape to create really unusual areas of metallic and shimmering color to the tape.  (I also added a white paper underneath the strips that I did not back with aluminum foil so that the colors were even more vivid). It's THAT SIMPLE and look at the really cool design strips that you've created and can use on all sorts of things!

 I cut some of my packing tape strips into smaller strips and mounted them onto a #10 Black Tag.

Next, using Specialty Stamping Paper, I stamped this adorable Prima Doll With Ruffle Dress Paper Doll using Jet Black Archival Ink.  I then stamped just the dress and hairband portion of the stamp again onto a piece of scrap cardstock and cut it out.  I colorized my doll using a Detailer Water Brush and Scattered Straw and Tattered Rose Distress Inks for the skin tones.  Her hair was first colored with Scattered Straw and then I added a little Tea Dye Distress Ink to it. Then I hot glued a sweet little cream colored bow and rose to the waist of her dress.

She is so cute but she really needed to be mounted on black cardstock to give her a nice contrast when I placed her on top of the brightly colored and patterned background of the large tag.

In this photo, you can see more of the closeup details of the background colors, patterns and metallics added to the underside of the packing tape strips. And you can see how much better the girl looks with that small black matting around her.  Instead of just stamping the word "CREATE" onto Specialty Stamping Paper, I decided to emboss the letters.  The shiny finish of the letters goes nicely with the shiny finish of the packing tape.  The letters are from Tim Holtz' Worn Text stamp set and are embossed with Black Embossing Powder.  I cut out the letters and mounted them onto black cardstock. They are popped into place using black pop dots.

In this photograph, you can see the wavy lines made by the little rake and how they are filled in with Perfect Pearls Powders to give a special shimmer effect.  Much more effective than just leaving them transparent.  You can also see the Gold Leafing running across the strip where the torn paper strip once was.

So, there it is ... my stamping on something besides plain white cardstock creation!  Come join us at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge and enter your stamped creation!  You could be the lucky winner of our weekly random drawing of a 

$50.00 credit voucher to Simon Says Stamp.  You could also be selected as one of our featured artists in our ...

a very nice honor indeed! 

Good luck!  I can't wait to see how you get your stamp on!

Here are all of the products available at Simon Says Stamp that were used in creating this Gelli Plate tag:

*PREORDER Ranger #12 BLACK CRAFT TAGS 5.125"" x 10.5"" Inkssentials Surfaces ISB35220	*Prima Flowers DOLL WITH RUFFLE DRESS Mixed Media Doll Stamp 910143	*Tim Holtz Cling Rubber Stamps 2013 WORN TEXT cms156	*Wendy Vecchi Cling Rubber Stamps ART FOR YOU Studio 490	*Wendy Vecchi Cling Rubber Stamps SUNSHINE AND ART Studio 490
*Ranger Inkssentials 8.5 x 11 SPECIALTY STAMPING PAPER ISP32908	*Ranger Archival Ink Pad JET BLACK AIP31468	*Tim Holtz DETAILER WATER BRUSH Ranger Watercoloring TIP33080	*Tim Holtz Distress Ink PAD TATTERED ROSE Pink Ranger	*Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK PAD SCATTERED STRAW Yellow Ranger
*Ranger Perfect Pearls SUNFLOWER SPARKLE Yellow Individual Pigment Powder	*Ranger Perfect Pearls BLUE RASPBERRY Individual Pigment Powder	*Ranger EMBOSSING POWDER BLACK Rubber Stamp Ink	*Versamark WATERMARK Rubber Stamp Emboss Chalk Resist INK PAD

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