Gesso’d Cards Push-Pull with Stencils

I was fortunate this past week to visit with my Mom, and join a fun group of ladies in Sun City Center at their Thursday morning stamping group. During their class, I showed them a fun technique to add texture to backgrounds for their cards. We started out with card stock that had been painted with Gesso. This lets watercolor inks, markers, dye based ink pads etc, wash really nicely, and even be removed, rather than getting sucked into the paper. We used clear Gesso from Liquitex, but clear Gesso from Windsor Newton works fine as well. White Gesso from any company also works great, as does Matte Medium. I find the clear Gesso has a little bit more grit to it, and is easier to use when first starting out. Any of these products will seal the card stock to allow the inks to wash and be removed. However, the white Gesso and Matte Medium have a bit more of a plastic-y finish to them, and you might have a tendency to wipe off too much ink, too quickly.

We wiped out pre-gessoed cardstock with dye based (non waterproof) ink and softened the effect with a baby wipe. Then we used mesh and stencils and cut outs to pull ink from the background and push ink back in. We used some of our backgrounds to stamp images on and then cut them out to layer onto other backgrounds. They came out beautiful- full of texture and interest!

It was a fun class, and I was so happy to be able to join them and play!!

Here is the follow up video I promised:

and here are some samples…