Gratitude, Happy Birthday & Some Gel Press Printing.

Happy Friday! I want to share two cards today. One uses again alcohol inks on YUPO paper and the other one a technique called gel press printing.

Here is my first card where I used one of the alcohol ink BG's I made recently and I cut out two leafy branches using the Whimsy die set Leaf Foliage 2 from the Crissy Armstrong collection.

I am really in love with these alcohol ink backgrounds with added foil. That really makes them stand out and pop. I cut out the leafy branches from YUPO paper using the Leaf Foliage 2 set. The window was die cut using the newly released Notched Rectangle die set. I adhered the branches using foam tape and glue dots.

The word gratitude - from the Gratitude Word die set - was die cut 3 times from heavy weight black cardstock. I adhered them on top of each other using Nuvo Deluxe adhesive and then on the card front. To make the word even stand out more I added Glossy Accents to the whole word. A few enamel dots and sequins finish off my card.

My second card for today is an eclipse card. I used a technique called gel press printing. For this technique a silicone gel plate and paint or ink is used to create colorful layered backgrounds.

I'm not 100% sure but I think this technique was developed using acrylic paints and artists are using it to create backgrounds for collages, mixed media pieces and also for fabric printing. Recently (at least for me new) it made its way into the card making world as well. On this card I used one of my first BG's made with this technique. I already played around more and on later pieces I also used stamps with staz-on ink and this looks awesome. I will use them on future projects. I will also make a tutorial on how I do these BG's to use on my cards but first I have to play around a bit more. So be patient I will be working on a tutorial soon. But you can go to you tube and you will find lots of gel press printing videos there.

For this BG I used oxide inks, I applied the ink onto the gel plate using a brayer. I also used the medium die from the Peony Flower die set to cut out flowers from white cardstock and used them as stencils on the silicone plate. To add an additional layer with a different color of oxide ink I used the Farmhouse Greenery stencil on the gel plate.

The word dies I used to create the eclipse effect are the large word die Happy and the word die birthday from the word die set Birthday Wishes and Magical . I did not only cut out the words from the background but as well twice from black cardstock and layered them behind the original die cut from the BG. This way you create a slight "drop shadow" to the eclipse words. I like the effect this has. A few sequins and a button finish off my card.

Here are the Whismy products I used on both of my cards: