Scrapbook Ideas for Creating a Gel-Printed Look on Your Page Background

Gel Printing is a popular art technique that entails layering several patterns over top of one another to create a fun, yet bold art print.

See how our creative team has gotten gel-print looks on their paper and digital scrapbook pages.

 

Marcia Fortunato says, “This layout is about a day spent at home on our lake with two of my sons and their families.”

“I have had a gel plate for some time but had never used it before. I wanted a watery look for my layout background and thought that the gel plate might work well to get the look I desired. I did a lot of experimenting, but for my final page I used a mix of blue and teal acrylic paints on a Stampendous Creative Palette monoprint plate.”

“I rolled the paints onto my plate with the darkest ones at the bottom then pressed paper to the plate and peeled it off to get most of the paint off. Then without adding more paint I put my background paper on the plate and peeled it off to get a lighter print. Since this is an 8”x10” plate and I was making a 12”x12” layout, I had to repeat these steps a couple of times to cover the page. I also added more texture to the page by rolling a small amount of paint on the palette, then pressing bubble wrap down to pick up some of the paint and pressing the bubble wrap onto my paper as a subtle stamp.”

“Before I started using my gel plate, I searched for YouTube videos to get ideas on how to use it. My tip is to watch a few of these (there are a lot!) and then just play and experiment, using up papers that you wouldn’t use otherwise. (I used the white backs of single-sided papers from partially used paper pads.)”

 

Kelly Prang says, “My daughters were excited to visit the beach for a quick end-of-summer trip back in August 2014.”

“As a digital scrapper, I have been watching the gelli-plate look with great interest and was excited to give the trend a whirl for this page. I started with map paper, added strips of text print then geometric paint stamped on top of it all. For a true gelli-print, this would work best with masking tape covering the text print, then the paint geometric stamped onto the gelli-plate. After that, lay map paper onto the whole plate to get this look.”

 

Hannah Lemieux says, “This layout is about how grateful I am to be able to spend precious family moments together. One of the things we like doing as a family is going out to dinner. Our favorite right now to go to is a pizza restaurant. I snapped this photo of my hubby and the girls as we waited to be seated.”

“I love to be artistic on my layouts whenever I can. I knew I was going to use a black and white photo, so this really was the perfect time to do a layout that had many art layers and colors. I didn’t have an actual gelli glass plate so I tried using a flat plate. I added paint on there with my palette knife. I also have a roller stamping tool that I used to press down my painted plate to my layout. After I tried this I knew I still needed to add more layers, so I pulled out some stencils and my foam edge blender, and used a new foam pad to add a thin layer of acrylic paint to my background. I also added splatters of thinned down acrylic paint and I added streaks of gold paint in patterns on my background. I drew circles to finish off my media layers with a charcoal pencil.”

“One tip for you is to have a color palette or combo in mind and mix shades of that color around in different spots. Another key tip is to understand that it will always look worse before it looks amazing. Mixed media and paint is messy and after two layers it gets to this crazy weird stage, but if you keep building those layers it will work itself out. Also if it doesn’t look that great you can always cut your background into shapes and use it that way, or use gesso or white paint to cover it all up. thinking about different shapes and textures that look ineteresting together is helpful too, you want to create dimension with the textures and shapes and edges you have with your layers.”

 

Jana Oliveira says, “These are pictures from the start and the end of my son’s 3rd grade year. It was a fantastic year for him in the new school.”

“As an artsy digital scrapper I remembered doing a lot of gel printing backgrounds but in pages they would be bulky or messy and not very complimentary to my pics, so I used techniques from my class on how to create a digital gel print look with digital stencil and marks and create a background of my own.”

“I combined papers, brushes and digital stencils to achieve this look, so my suggestion would be to look for digital papers that have an art journal look and blend them together they can speed up your process.”

 

Christy Strickler says, “Our cats Pixie and Momo are best buddies. Often, Pixie will get as close as she can to Momo for naptime.”

“I used a circular shaped gelli plate and a stencil with teal and white acrylic paint to create the base for my design. I then used a square plate and repeated the same two-tone layer of paint to print on a second sheet of paper. Printing off faded the design a bit. I then cut out embellishments from the prints and placed them onto the layout.”

“Using gelli plate prints is a great way to add texture to a layout without making the page heavy or bulky. Before you start printing, have a color palette in mind, and stick to it. It makes it easier to find matching embellishments without making the page busy. Outlining your printed designs with a pen makes them pop off the page. Gelli Prints are a very budget friendly way to add variety to your scrapbook albums.”

 

Megan Blethen says, “My best friend was diagnosed with cancer almost five years ago. She was completely blindsided by it, but she was so strong through everything. I took a lot of photos of her throughout her treatments to remind her of how strong she was. This is one of my absolute favorites I took. I wanted this layout to portray how strong she was and how she always held her head up, no matter how hard the days were.”

“This technique worked out amazing on this layout. I wanted to portray lots of emotion and I felt that the different stencils and paints I used on the background created a lot of flowing movement. I used watered down Dazzlerz Pastes from Shimmerz Paints to create the gel printed look with stencils. With this technique, I have learned that layers are key. And it’s OK to get messy! Have fun and enjoy the process.”