Clear Gesso

Hello friends! I'm fairly new to the mixed media art world, so I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different products and discovering techniques to use in my card making. Today I want to share a card I created with Clear Gesso as the base, so let's get started.....

To create my background I:

• painted a piece of card stock with a layer of Clear Gesso (Art Basics)
• once dry, I used sponge daubers to apply Broken China Distress Oxide (Ranger) to the center
• next I, spritzed the ink with some water
• using a small paintbrush, I spread the ink around my card stock to form a pretty background and let it dry

The wonderful thing about Clear Gesso is that it doesn't change the color of your paper at all, but it gives you a surface that's slightly textured and holds the paints, inks, watercolors you apply so they won't soak into your paper right away. Regular card stock will soak up the color, dry quickly, and pill after too many applications of water. Here's a photo of white card stock without the gesso to show you the difference in the above technique:

You'll notice:

1. The color didn't spread nearly as far - the center is dark/the edges are light - uneven color
2. The color isn't as vibrant as it soaked into the paper
3. The paper has a bit of "pill" to it
4. It doesn't look like watercolor like the above panel does

To create my panel I:

• stamped flowers, stems, and "sentiment" from the Blossom stamp set (Tim Holtz) in Tuxedo Black ink Tsukineko)
• colored the stems with Touch Five Markers
• using a Splatter Brush (Ranger) I applied some diluted (with water) Frayed Burlap Distress Oxide (Ranger)
• glued my flowers (below) over top and fussy cut around one to create a popped out image

 

For the flowers I:

• painted a piece of card stock with a layer of Clear Gesso (Art Basics)
• stamped a flower from Blossom (Tim Holtz) in Versamark Watermark ink and added black embossing powder
• applied some Spun Sugar Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the petals and painted with water and a small paintbrush (since I was cutting these out I didn't worry about staying in the lines)
• applied Picked Raspberry Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the petals and repeated the wet paintbrush step
• applied Spiced Marmalade Distress Crayon (Tim Holtz) to the centers and painted it with water
• using just water and a clean paintbrush I removed some of the ink from the centers of my flowers
• This is possible because of the Clear Gesso -- the ink is longer drying and can be moved around and removed for some time - I tried this same technique on regular white card stock without gesso and it didn't work!

To finished off my card I:

• stamped a Script background stamp (SU) in Versamark Watermark ink  over my flowered panel 
• added white embossing powder and heat set
• matted my panel on pink card stock
• embossed a piece of white card stock with the Lattice embossing folder from Creative Expressions
• assembled my card

Now it's your turn....stop by our CURRENT LINK PARTY and showoff any projects that include a few products from companies Cropstop carries in the store! I'll look forward to seeing your work appear in the gallery!