Gelli Arts Christmas Cards

When Gelli Arts® contacted me awhile ago about working with their products, I jumped up and down and said YES! If you are interested in doing some Christmas shopping and picking up a Gelli Arts® Printing Plate, right now there is free shipping. The code is JOYFULPRINTING2016 and you can click HERE to visit the Gelli Arts® website.

Even though calligraphy and lettering has pretty much taken over my life, I still love everything crafty and DIY. I wanted to create some fun backgrounds and use my lettering too to make some Christmas projects.

I got busy and put everything on my dining room table: the Gel Printing Plate and brayer, assorted acrylic paints, Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid, and Strathmore Bristol paper. I use Smooth Bristol paper a lot because I like to do calligraphy on very smooth surfaces.

I took the 8″ x 10″ Gel Printing Plate out of the packaging, squirted some Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid on it and spread it with the brayer.

I applied the Acrylic Glazing Liquid first as kind of an extender, knowing some of my paints were pretty thick and also to slow the drying time a little. Plus, this stuff dries glossy, which is great for shiny happy Christmas cards!

Then the paint application began. I thought I would create 2 colours palettes: greens and metallics.

I used a few different shades and brand of green acrylic paint, plus the Acrylic Glazing Liquid, then spread it with the brayer.

Ok, aren’t these colours just LUSH!?!?!?

I placed the Bristol paper right on top, and pulled off 2 prints. The print on the left is the first pull, and the right side is the second. I love both!

With the brayer full of paint, I rolled it off on another piece of Bristol paper, and loved the effect, so I used these smaller pieces for cutting and tags.

I also worked with some lighter greens and tried drawing some stars to create a pattern, using an old Crayola marker that I found in a bin somewhere.

I thought this was a fun pattern when I printed it onto the Bristol. And suddenly I knew I had to try some lettering right onto the paint and Gelli plate.

Yes, I knew it would come out backwards, but I couldn’t resist writing in that thick, juicy green paint! And it resulted in a ‘mirror selfie’ ha ha

I also wanted to create some gold silver metallic marbling, so I got busy with those paints.

The colours and textures are so much better in real life! Very shimmery and beautiful metallics!

Even the extra paint run off the brayer was gorgeous!

Then the merry crafting began! I used the green prints to make cards and tags:

My Kuretake Metallic Gold Fudebiyori brush pen was perfect for writing “Noel” on a tag, and then the outline in white with the Uniball Signo 153 really made it pop.

I used the same lettering technique on the “Be Merry” card too.

And on this gold silver marbled place card:

For a card, I decided to cut some green prints into triangles and then drew white branches on them to make trees.

I adhered everything together with Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L E-Z Runner and 3D Foam Tape.

Then I used a Tombow Fudenosuke Soft tip brush pen to write the world “Believe”

I hope you are inspired to get crafty with some Gelli Arts®!

Here are some affiliate shopping links if you’re interested in some of the products I used today. Just click on the photo to see them in my Amazon store: