Gel Printed Circle Background

Hello friends! I hope you have had a good weekend! I did two icy, but beautiful walks, and also had fun playing with the kids in the snow. As I am writing this, it is snowing pretty heavily outside my window. I sure hope spring will be here before Easter!

It is Monday, and this week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Road Trip theme. Remember to check out the project by our March guest designer Nox.

I did an art journal page with a road trip theme just two weeks ago, so for this week, I wanted to do something that wasn't car related. Instead, I made a layout about road trips by bike. I love to cycle and how it can bring you to places you haven't seen before and often cycle without planning exactly where I am going. Quite a few times, I have ended up having to cycle far when trying new paths and not being sure of where they were leading to. The past two summers, Anton has gone with me on bike trips, a little further and further the more he gets used to cycling. I do bring a map on those trips though, since they can't be too long. I used a photo from our first longer trip, to a lake we hadn't visited before. We had a great time.

The background is gel printed, using Ranger's new gel printing plates. I hadn't done gel printing for a while and had lots of fun.

White and yellow paint was brayered onto the largest gel plate in the pack. I used two stencils by Tim Holtz and one by Dina Wakley to make the patterns into the paint. I liked the effect of the straight edges, and brayered some paint on only an edge, pressing a dry-embossed paper into the paint for the grid pattern and printed it here and there one the paper until there was no more paint on the plate. 

Next, I used the circle gel plate in the set and placed it on an acrylic block, so that it kind of became a stamp. Lime and Sky paint was brayered on the plate and I pressed dry embossed papers onto it to create patterns. This is my favourite way of adding patterns when gel printing (and you can use the painty dry embossed papers too). The circle was stamped on the page until there was no more paint left. 

This was my final background, with lots of circles, patterns and stripes.

To mimic the grass in the photo, I stamped the pretty grass stamp from Tim's Nature's Discovery set with Vivid Chartreuse Archival Ink.

 

Even the title letters are gel printed. I die cut Storybook letters from white mat board, and printed them with the circle plate, pressing a dotted dry embossed paper into it first.

I was happy to find a larger and a smaller bike stamp, and also added the number 2.

I often reach for this sentiment stamp by Tim, since I really like this combination of words and think all three are equally important in life.

Here's another sentiment which is very suitable for cycling. We always take a picnic blanket along, and snacks and sometimes a sketchbook. The journaling is written on a tag that it tucked in a pocket behind the photo.

I also stamped the page with the dot stamp from the Psychedelic Grunge set.

A couple of gears fitted well on a page about cycling.

I hope you will join us this week in our Road Trip challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies: 

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

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