I apologize in advance that this may not be like my other posts with a lot of detail and measurements,  as I got carried away playing and forgot to take some step by steps. I didn't actually intend to make this a post until recently when I seen how they all turned out. 

Some times it really just nice to sit and play with now end goal in mind.

As you know from previous post I recently fell down the rabbit whole of  mixed media and art journaling only to fall in deeper when I discovered gel pressing. OMG  seriously why haven't I been doing this sooner.

It really was a happy accident, I was watching some YouTube videos on art journaling when Shari Carrol’s video came up from Simon Say Stamp and well the rest is history, I am hooked.  Needless to say I had to purchase a gel press and try all these techniques out.

Due to all the videos I binge watched,  I seen you could use your dies/ die cuts on your press, well that just lit a light bulb up for me. I went into my amazing Paper Rose stash of dies and pulled out the Moroccan square die, Circled Layered background dies and started playing around. These dies really were the perfect elements to create stencils with, detailed yet not to delicate that it held up well to the paints. 

I used heavy weight cardstock to die cut them out, I did have to use my metal shim as they are very intricate.  

I pulled out my gel press 5x 7 as well as paints in a variety of colours which you can see above, a roller, some stencils and pieces of bubble wrap and the vintage letter stamps also from paper rose.  I started going to town layering and playing with the paints, stencils and little loose ends making prints into the paint.  I did some on cream cardstock, white cardstock, craft, and printing paper.  I could not get enough. As you can see from the above picture.  

For this set of card I used the Moroccan print. I initially started out with the actual die cut on the gel plate, I then added the black paint on top and used my roller to move the ink all over it.  I then pressed the white paper on top of it with out removing, this gave me one print, I then removed the die cut and pressed another sheet onto it, giving me a second print which was slightly different.

The craft version top left, I had previously inked up with pink, and purple using some stencils from my stash and some bubble wrap, the last step was pressing it on the Moroccan square image.  I love how looked. 

Now it was time to turn these beautiful prints into cards, I kept it fairly simply allowing the prints to be the focal point. 

I created standard A2 5½ x 4¼ , for the congrats card, I just layered the print on to some heavy weight black cardstock and directly on to the base. I die cut the Congrats out of the same black cardstock as well as some mirror paper from my stash.  To finish of the out side of the card I added some sequins from collection. A card isn't complete with out some BLING!

 I created the inside of the card using  the same die and my new AMAZING life changing blending brushes and a fuchsia ink from my stash.  It really tied it in nicely. 

Last by not least the Thanks card, I decided to actually adhere the a new clean die cut on to the panel of the print I had created, off setting it just a bit for a bit more interest and dimension. Once that was done I cut down heavy weight white cardstock and popped up the print on to it and straight on to a black card base, I wanted to clean up the edges of the die cut – as I had to trim off quite a bit, I decided to add the stitched frame on top. To me this just finished it off nicely. From there I die cut the thanks sentiment several times, from pink mirror cardstock, black and white as well. This way I could layer the pink and black slightly off set and then on to the white shadow which really just made it all pop. 

Hope this was helpful and you were able to get some inspiration and some new ideas.

Happy Gel Pressing!

Have a Great Week!