Masculine Gel Press Cards

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Hi everyone, Heidi here, first of all I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year! May all your wishes for 2018 come true!

For today’s project I would like to show you how to create a set of masculine cards for any occasion, for which I used a Gel Press mono printing plate.

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The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. The opinions I share are solely my own. This post also contains affiliate links.

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About the Gel Press mono printing plate:

– this is a soft gel plate, mine is 6 x 6 inch in size (and fairly thick);

– keep the packaging the plate comes in because this is the perfect storage solution (I also would recommend storing horizontally);

– I use this gel plate in combination with a Speedball 2 inch Soft Rubber brayer;

– don’t use any sharp objects like knifes, forks or scissors because they can damage your plate;

– you can use this gel plate for example with your acrylic paints: I personally liked the thinner paints better, but you can try out any paints that you have and see what you like (you don’t need much paint for one print);

– it’s a lot of fun to use your gel plate in combination with stencils, the look you get is quite unique and different compared with directly applying ink or paint over a stencil to paper;

– the results are not (always) predictable which makes this a very unique process I feel, it’s also very intuitive, you’ll notice that when you’re in it for about 15 to 20 minutes your mind will go like “what if I do this“, “what if I try that“, just go with the flow and you’ll created fabulous designs!;

– you don’t have to clean your Gel Press plate between applying different paint colours, in fact you get great results by not removing the stains of paint that stay behind from your previous print. When you do want to clean your gel plate you can use baby wipes (just make sure they don’t contain alcohol or oils);

– you can pull one print and stop there or you can layer prints over each other: when your first print is dry (which doesn’t take a long time) you create a new print and put the same paper on again, layering colours and designs over each other. You will see that you work on several pieces of paper at one given moment, so make sure that you have enough paper at hand;

– as mentioned I would recommend that you have a pile of printer paper by your site while playing with your Gel Press plate, to roll of your brayer for example or to pull prints with. Personally I like to use a thicker paper to pull my prints, but you can use whatever paper you like, try black or kraft paper for example, I especially liked working on black paper. You can even use the paper that you rolled your brayer of on, on a project!;

– why is this plate called a mono printing plate? Because each print you pull is different, unlike prints for a newspaper for example;

– so, let’s get out our favourite stencils and have some fun! Be warned: this is a super fun and very addictive activity!

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Step 1:

Since the mono printing process is very intuitive and you’ll find yourself trying lots of things you might not like everything that you create, that’s okay, just go with the flow, you can keep layering until you like the results or start over with a new print. I created a bunch of prints and then choose my favourites to use for this project. I used different coloured paints but the same stencils and using both black (chalk card stock) and white (Clairefontaine Digital Colour Printing 210 gr) paper, cutting A4 size in half before pulling the prints: this way you get different results but all the designs fit together! For the prints that I’ll use today I only used two or three layers of printing.

For today’s project I used the following The Crafter’s Workshop stencils:

Celtic Design (TCW732s)

Onion Blossoms (TCW726s)

And the following paint colours (on black and white paper):

The Crafter’s Workshop Heavy Body Acrylic Paint in the colour “Black Licorice“;

– Reeves acrylic paint in the colour “Copper“;

– DecoArt Americana acrylic paint in the colour “Snow (Titanium) White“;

– DecoArt Americana acrylic paint in the colour “Marigold”;

– DecoArt Americana acrylic paint in the colour “Hauser Light Green“;

– DecoArt Americana acrylic paint in the colour “Hauser Dark Green“.

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Step 2:

So, I started this project with four pulled prints (two on black and two on white card stock) and one A4 sheet of printer paper that I rolled my brayer of on (with the same paint colours) that I will also use in this project!

Next I die cut stitched circle shapes in different sizes from the pulled prints, using a stitched circle die set. You can create a bunch of cards in one go this way mixing and matching different colours of circles on the same card or just keeping to one colour combination, whatever you like!

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Step 3:

I’ll first show you how to create the card with the sheet of paper that I rolled my brayer of on: I first die cut a rectangle shape using a stitched rectangle nesting die in the size that I wanted and I looked for three die cut circles in the same size and colour combination that I liked.

Then I created a mat for my background paper in a matching orangy/coppery colour and also using a nesting die set. I also die cut three circles from the same white card stock that I used for my card base, slightly larger then the Gel Press circles. I adhered the mats onto each other and those onto the card base using liquid glue and I also adhered the white die cut circles using one millimetre thick foam tape. For some added interest in the background I splattered with Coliro Pearl Colors by Finetec GmbH in the colour “Moss Green“ and set this aside to dry.

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Step 4:

While this project was drying I started working on the sentiments for my cards: on all of today’s cards I used sentiments that come in the Altenew “Persian Motifs“ stamp set. I stamped each sentiment on light yellow card stock and then die cut a rectangle around the sentiment using rectangle dies from nesting die sets.

When the Pearl Colors where dry I only had to adhere the Gel Press circles using one millimetre thick foam tape and also adhering the sentiment to the card using one millimetre thick foam tape.

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

Step 5:

For the other two cards that I’ll show you today I also used die cut circles from the Gel Press prints that I showed you earlier on but I choose circles in different sizes and colour combinations.

I die cut a white rectangle mat and a slightly larger black (for one card) and green (for the other card) mat. I adhered these mats together using liquid glue and adhered them to a white coloured card base using one millimetre thick foam tape.

I splattered with Coliro Pearl Colors in “Moss Green“ and “Red Brown“ and when this was dry assembled the cards in the same way as the first card using foam tape (in one or two millimetre).

To finish these cards I adhered some Cartwright’s Sequins in the colour “Metallic Gray“ in different sizes using Ranger Medium Matte.

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

How to create masculine cards using the Gel Press plate

And that finished this fun masculine Gel Press card project!

Thank you Gel Press for providing the team with this awesome gel printing plate, I had so much fun playing with it!

Do you like to use your stencils in combination with your Gel Press mono printing plate?

We would love to see what you create with The Crafters Workshop Stencils and Mediums.
You can share it with us on our Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest using hashtag #tcwstencillove.

Heidi Jakobs  

The Crafter’s Workshop Design Team Member

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