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Practical Scrappers Feature: Gesso

One of my favourite products to use on my layouts lately is GESSO. I first heard of gesso within the context of art journaling and mixed media and thought I'll never need it. But I picked up a jar and started playing, and now it's a regular go-to product for me. If you haven't heard of gesso, yet, stick with me and maybe by the end of this article you will want to add it to your scrappy supply shelf, too!

Gesso is an acrylic primer. It has a matte finish and can be applied directly from the jar. It also work as a sealer.

Most of the time you will see white gesso, but black and some other colours are also available. There are many brands of gesso and you will find it at artists' supply stores, the large craft chains, and some local scrapbook stores now carry it, as well.

You can add things to gesso, such as acrylic or watercolour paint to create a tinted product that delivers a chalky finish. I've read that you can  add Twinkling H20's and PearlEx to gesso and I plan to try this soon, since I have a few little jars of PearlEx on my supply shelf.

I thought I'd show you a few of the things I've done with gesso in the last month or so, just to get you thinking about how you might use it:

1.

 On this layout, I smeared a bit of gesso around the page edges and dripped a bit on the corners to give the page a bit of an aged or rustic feel.

2.
I added a ton of texture to this page by laying a plastic butterfly template over the page and then applying the gesso somewhat thickly to the stencil. Once the gesso was dry, I sponged some ink to the gesso to further accentuate the texture.

3.
One of the easiest techniques ever is to apply a thin coat of gesso on patterned paper. It will dry quickly and then you have a spot for your journalling.

4.

Before I misted this canvas frame, I primed it with gesso (I might not have needed to, since it was white already) but it gave me a fun texture - you can get different textures by altering your application methods. A foam brush will produce a smooth finish, while a bristle brush will add lines, and a comb will add even more texture. The gesso provided a base to add on some texture medium and build up a bit on this canvas, and I embedded some microbeads into the texture medium for a rough and bumpy finish.

One more technique that I've seen demonstrated at ScrapFest but have not tried yet, is to use gesso for image transfers onto canvas. This gives your photo an artsy look as the photo will transfer with some imperfections and also show the texture of the canvas below - really fun!

So, wil you give a gesso a try? Do you have some gesso ideas that I should try soon? Let me know by leaving a comment!

 

Going Up? Inspiration Elevator launches!

Welcome to Inspiration Elevator! What a thrilling day! Today is the launch of Inspiration Elevator (IE), a challenge blog created by my dear friend Christa Uttley and me. We chose the name Inspiration Elevator because it is our intent to raise our creativity to heights through challenges issued every month. We want to raise our designs from the ordinary to the extraordinary. We hope you'll join us on our journey!

IE is a group of like minded scrappy friends who want to raise the bar in their own creative process through unique challenges that we issue to each other once a month. These won't be run of the mill challenges and we hope you'll join us each month and be inspired by the creative designs we've created.

This is not a blog hop, and there are no prizes, but we would love it if you’d take a few minutes to see what the rest of the Inspiration Elevator team created. We are sure you will feel inspired to get creative:

Ann (that's me! So thrilled to be among these talented women!)

Audrey 

Carolyn

Cathy

Christa

Joanne

Laura

Laurel

Lisa M

Lisa S

Sue

The first challenge, issued by Christa, is two-fold: to create a new design that reflects your style, and to use a new product or technique that you find inspiring right now.

 
Things that make this a quintessentially Ann Jobes layout are: a long, multi-font title, inking & distressing, journaling.

I often dabble with handmade embellishments, so there's some of that on here too.

My response to the second part of the challenge, to include a technique or product that you are currently being inspired by, is not all that obvious now that the layout is done... but it is part of the journey in completing the layout. I wanted a tone on tone pattern that didn't take away from the blue woodgrain, so laid the butterfly template over the blue woodgrain paper and spritzed with a denim mist. I wanted the pattern to be subtle, and it gleams in person, but is very not obvious - next time, I'll pick a slightly darker! But isn't that blue woodgrain perfect with the blue background behind her feet? Yes, this MME line worked perfectly for this layout, I think.

Here's a shot of the multi-font title. I played on the old Nancy Sinatra title, These Boots Were Made for Walking and switched it up to These Feet were Meant for Dancing. The journaling reads: When you were given the Language Arts assignment to write something about something you had to overcome, you took the project seriously and crated a wonderful foot-shaped mini album about being born with metarsal adducturs. Who would believe looking at those feet now, that when they handed my brand new baby girl to me they told me she was healthy, scored fine on the Agpar, but would probably need surgery to correct a problem with her feet? We averted the surgery through massage, stretches, physiotherapy, and supportive shoes. To the untrained eye, your feet look just fine. This year, in dance, you started to realize that this condition affects your dancing, especially your form. By working harder, you are forming good points with your toes. You concluded your mini book with a quote one of your dance teachers posted on Facebook that reads, "Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard." You added, "I want to to be hardworking and talented." My sweet girl, you are both and I couldn't be more proud of you! You have worked so hard this year and it shows! Love, Mom xo

The circle garland is something I just came up with. When I was playing with all the LYB Paradise stuff a month ago, they sold a garland embellishment that I didn't purchase because I'm cheap  frugal. For this layout, I remembered the garland and made my own.

I used my brown ink over the red glitter letters because they were a little too red, like ruby slipper red, and the ink mellowed them into a shade that works with the stripes in the patterned paper.

If you play along this month with the challenge, please let me know - I'd love to visit your blog and see what you made. Take a few minutes, too, to visit my team mates/friends to see what they made in response to this challenge - I KNOW you will be inspired and impressed! Let me know what you think by leaving a comment - it would make my day!

May 1st MSW Reveal: Always There

Lucy gave us this sketch to work with this month:

I haven't worked with a circle shape in awhile, so it was a fun challenge.

If you've worked with media like mists and gel medium, then you know that your page warps and bends. It will flatten once its in a page protector, but boy those warps sure make it a challenge to photograph!

I thought I'd use some Momenta papers for this layout - bff Christa thought I'd enjoy them! Although this is a family photo rather than a friendship photo, I still used that word paper - love it and I thought it would still work.
I copied the title from a phrase in the text in the paper.
I decided to give the page a less weighty feel by using a cut out circle rather than a solid circle. I also cut it a little off center just to weight it a little. You can see the varied and colourful fonts I chose. The butterflies were naked chipboard that I brushed with a coat of gesso to prime them, and then coloured with ink. They also got a spritz of diamond mist for a little glitter, but it is not very obvious.

This shot shows you the technique I used. First, I spritzed on some mist in a blue that complements the patterned paper. Then I placed a template over my page, applied gel medium, carefully lifted the template and let the page dry, which did not take long. Next I applied ink directly to the gel medium to accentuate the texture and pattern. You can see that the green rubon even went over the gel medium.

I'm going to keep experimenting to see what else I can do with the medium on more pages in the future. It's not too messy because it dries so quickly, and the more I play, the more I like getting a little messy!

I wanted to send out my thanks to Eileen, over at The Scrapping Actuary, who shared a little honour with me by extending the Leibster Award to me. I am touched by your kind words, Eileen, and thank you for thinking of me! I am going to give it a little thought, and in my next post, I'll pay the Leibster Award forward. Meantime, please visit my friend, Eileen. She's a little new to blogging, but not to scrapbooking, and she does fabulous, gorgeous work. Let me know what you think of her tissue box!

And if you use Lucy's sketch this month, I'd love to see it - be sure to leave me a link!

 

 

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