You can make really cool floral backgrounds with gelli plates, too! Let me show you a couple I made recently.

I began by rolling out a layer of iridescent blue/green Pebeo acrylics with my brayer. You already know I am on a mission to use every one of the stencils I own, so I looked in my box and grabbed this floral stencil from Joggles and placed it on top of the paint layer.

I placed a sheet of card stock over the stencil and smoothed it down with my hand, making sure to pick up the color through the stencil. This was the print I made. I liked it but knew I could do more.

Without lifting the stencil, I added a layer of flourescent pink over the top of the stencil and onto the gelli plate underneath.

This is what it looked like at that point. Hahaha! Hopeful!

I removed the stencil, then made a print using a sheet of card stock. I love this one! Both colors share the beauty and are represented equally due to the way I made my layers.

I did not clean my gelli plate because I don’t do that. Ever. Hahahaha! I love texture! You see here I grabbed tubes of Dina Wakley‘s magenta and blackberry violet acrylics.

I used my brayer to roll out a layer of the blackberry all over the gelli plate. Then I placed the same flower stencil on top – I didn’t clean it either. Cause I’m like that. Hahahahaha! I ain’t got time for that. Hahahahaha!

I left the stencil in place and placed a sheet of card stock on top and made a print. I like that it not only picked up the blackberry but also picked up some of the green from the stencil itself.

Next I left the stencil in place and rolled out a layer of that magenta. Right over the top of the gelli plate and the stencil.

Then I removed the stencil and placed a sheet of card stock on top of the gelli plate and smoothed it down all over. Then pulled this print. I wasn’t liking the clumpiness of the blackberry acrylic. I guess my tube is pretty old and it left clumps here and there. I still like the lift – I just feel grumpy because of the clumpies. Yes, I am uber tired. Can you tell?

I rolled out a layer of purple craft paint and put the stencil on top.

And lifted away some of the color with a clean up sheet of paper.

Then with the stencil still in place I rolled out a layer of that pretty fluorescent pink from before.

Here you go. Still a little clumpy in places but that’s ok .

I removed the stencil and this is what the gelli plate looked like at that point. You can see the purple that was underneath the stencil and the pink that I brayered on around the stencil.

And I pulled my last print. Sorry, not real clear here. But I have photos of each print dry and in natural light. Let me show you.

I love each one! But you don’t have to do florals! This technique of triple layering will work with any stencil you want to use. A stencil with lots of openings works best! I love playing with my gelli plates and seeing the colors and textures I can achieve. A couple of you mentioned you were going to try some of the gelli plate projects I’ve been showing you. I hope you will. It is super fun!

When you read this – Mark and I will be flying to Florida. We are going south for a few days on a food run. And I am not even joking. The thing I miss the most about the south is the food. We have one diner here close to our home and they just don’t understand southern. Hahahaha! We have a list of restaurants we are going to while we are there. We hope to spend a day at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter but it really depends on the temperatures. I have a thyroid disease that causes me not to be able to handle heat very well. So that one we will play by ear. Also the police department we are both retired from is having a Christmas luncheon and we are going to it hoping to run into some old friends. I am trying to schedule a couple posts ahead of time to run while I’m gone. I may not get around to answering your comments until we get back home. And I don’t fly well but I do have patches and pills. So I am ready! Florida – here we come!

Over the past week I have shown you ATCs I made using a playing card as the base. Which works out great because the two items are the same size – 2.5″ x 3.5″ each. In Creative Crafty Friends we had a swap where we made three altered playing cards about anything Christmas. I’ve already shown you my vintage Santa card that I loved and the polar bear card which I also loved. Today is the last of the three ATCs using playing cards. Ready? Here we go.

I began by pulling out a whole bunch of papers I could use. I knew an angel was going to be the focus but I needed some papers of a similar color range to use underneath and around my angel.

And these are the items I chose. I was really feeling that hand made pink paper with the silver swirls. I have had it for several years and never had a place to use it. It is actually fabric. The paper underneath the angel and all the way to the right is a bit of scrapbook paper I really like. I’ve used it to draw on in the past and had this bit of extra. And I thought it looked really nice with the pink swirls and the Christmas sticker words I found. That angel is a piece of advertising for an angel doll at Ashton Drake. I stuck it in my collage drawer last year about this time. I knew not much of it would fit on the ATC but I thought I could fit enough to make it worthwhile.

I began by adhering the scrapbook paper onto the playing card with scor tape. The pink fabric paper was placed using Dina Wakley Clear Gesso and my paint shaper tool. Same with the scrap from my A Christmas Carol book that I use for this type of thing.

And then I thought Angels We Have Heard on High and decided to add some music score. No idea what song it is – if it is even a song. It came from another bit of scrapbook paper. I dried the attached bits with my heat tool, then trimmed away the excess paper from the playing card.

The angel was a little harder to attach. I ended up attaching her with the same clear gesso but for some reason I couldn’t work out the creases and lines. So I just hoped it made my angel look a little older and wiser. Hahahaha!

I knew I wanted to ink the edges with this Posy color because it was in my color scheme, but I also wanted to ‘finish’ the edges a bit more. So I added some cattail in a couple places.

The Happy Holidays came from the sticker sheet in the first photo. The word charms were adhered with Zots – I need to order some more.

Not my most elaborate ATC but I wanted to keep the focus on the angel and on the word Christmas.

The hardest part about these swaps is not in the making. The hardest part is not knowing how they were received. I send everything with a tracking number so I know when the packages are delivered. But out of the nine swaps I did this month, only two of those nine people acknowledged receipt of the package. In our group we are supposed to post a photo if we can – but to at least say thank you. And really all I want to know is that the person appreciated the thought. So I may be re-thinking this whole swap thing come January. On the other hand – it gives me something I can share here with you <3 and I know you appreciate it!

Mark making tools. As you find them put them into a box to save for days like this one! Let me show you a couple finds of mine.

I don’t remember how I came into possession of this really cool piece of paper. It is thick and sturdy and I immediately thought gelli plate when I saw it! So I put it in my basket of gelli plates and today I pulled it out. I began by brayering a layer of orange craft paint onto my gelli plate, then placed the paper face down into the color. This piece of paper is bumpy and textured like this on both sides. I rubbed it smoothly all over with my hand, then lifted the purple paper off the gelli plate and set it aside.

Then I made a print by placing a sheet of paper onto the gelli plate and smoothing it down with my hand, then pulling it away from the plate.

Next I rolled out a layer of iridescent green/yellow paint onto the plate. I really like this piece of bubble wrap. Most of the bubble wrap I have has the small bubbles but not this one. It has really nice large bubbles. I took this sheet and placed it onto the paint of the plate and smoothed it down all over with my hand.

When I lifted the bubble wrap away from the plate it left this texture behind. It removed some paint from the areas where it made bubble shapes and you can see there is a mixture of both orange and green color left behind. Mud? Let’s see.

Not really. This is a piece of thin computer paper I used to lift some of the color. And the combination of the two colors did not make mud but kept the integrity of each color.

Then without adding any more paint to the plate, I placed two smaller pieces of mixed media paper down and smoothed them down really well with my hand.

And I was able to lift this much color and texture on these prints. Most of the color had now been removed from the plate but you can see in the background there was still some bubble texture remaining.

I added a layer of iridescent green/yellow on top without cleaning the plate. I never clean my plates. Hahahaha! If you look at this plate you will see flowers, some geometric shapes, some citrus shapes and some bubbles – all from past lifts. The shapes are still there.

I used that piece of bubble wrap again and lifted away some of the color – and left behind some texture.

Then without making any prints – I added another layer of that orange color right over the top. I brayered it lightly so it would not disturb the texture of the bubbles.

And placed two pieces of mixed media paper onto the plate. This time I used my brayer to rub over the paper to make my prints. I had a ton of paint on my hands already and this seemed to make more sense. Hahahah!

And pulled my prints. That’s gelli-speak for pulling the paper off the plate and seeing what you got! You can see from this post alone that you can get a lot of mileage from your texture mark making materials. I used two in this post and those bubbles kept giving and giving. Let me show you these pieces with photos taken in natural light so you get a better idea of the colors.

These will eventually get cut down into ATCs or some of the pages may even wind up in Tangle Starts 2 when I put it together. And that bubble wrap? I stamped it onto my clean off paper and put the piece of wrap back into my gelli plate box for future use.

This was a fun ATC to put together – I love how it turned out! Creative Crafty Friends had a swap going for three altered playing cards turned into Christmas ATCs. I showed you my vintage Santa Clause not long ago. Today let’s see how this sweet little polar bear ATC came together.

I began with these three leftovers of scrapbook paper. I used to have a lot of 12×12 sheets, when we moved I cut them down into smaller pieces to make storage a bit easier. I thought these three pieces would work well together.

The edge of the beige piece was already hand torn from the earlier Santa Clause ATC, I just added ink along the top. Pretty sure that was Tahiti in the Dyestress Ink Pad line. I adhered it to the blue backing with scor tape.

I tore the top of the floral piece, inked the edge with the same color and attached it to the base layers. I didn’t worry about the sizes being all crazy. I glued this whole piece to one side of the playing card with scor tape.

Then trimmed around the playing card from the back side and inked all the way around with the same Tahiti blue. When I ink edges I pretty much always scuff some color across the surface. I usually get a bit of that happening just from inking around the ATC so I thought why not make it look intentional.

I knew I wanted to use this sweet little polar bear that came on a collage sheet from Joggles. So I trimmed him out and started looking at placement. Right away I noticed the background was too dark, too flowery for a location a polar bear would be found in.

So I pulled out a bottle of white craft paint and a paintbrush . . .

. . . and dry brushed some white right over the top. I liked it much better but it still looked a little too flowery. The Tahiti ink pad took care of that! Hahaha!

My polar bear was lonely. Hahaha! Joggles has another collage sheet of bunnies and gnomes and this little guy was the perfect size. And it looks just like he brought that Christmas package for the bear. Prior to putting them in place I ran the pieces through my sticker machine, then stuck them onto the ATC.

Details. Many times it is all about the details. I used my clear glitter gelly roll pen to add sparkles on the ribbon, the scarf, the bunny’s ear and the bear’s paw. And although you can’t see it well in this particular photo – I also went over each of the scrolls of the gold piece with clear glitter. A gold gelly roll pen added some highlight lines around the bottom section. And that Peace charm was the perfect finishing touch!

Here is the back side. Remember – a playing card is the same size as an ATC. That makes it easy to have a sturdy backing for your ATC and it adds a sweet little bit of interest for the new owner.

I love it! The three playing cards I adapted for Christmas all went to a sweet lady who has been sick. I know she received them – I hope they made her feel a little special. And from our house to yours – Merry Christmas!!!