I wish I might...

The Paperartsy challenge this past fortnight has been gels and mediums. I do have some, and haven't really used them for much, so the abundance of tutorials and inspiration has really been useful and fun. Since the new Craft Barn weekly challenge happens to be sprays, I'm posting for that too. I have used heavy gloss gel (Liquitex) to make skins on (the two) embossing folders I have... Here's a card I put together with one:

I tried spraying the skin as it was and drying with a heat gun, but I found that the thin edges of the skin stuck to the scrap paper I had underneath, so I adhered the skin to a card base before I continued spraying. I tried lots of sprays (Lindy's, Dylusions, Perfect Pearls, Tattered angels...) and other stuff (inka gold wax, perfect pearls, wink of stella...) to enhance the texture, but a lot of it seems to wipe of, so I decided to leave the feathers as a background. I stamped the flower from Jofy 31 and the sentiment from Rubberdance affirmations sheet on some silk card, heat embossed with clear embossing powder and sprayed with all the same sprays I used on the background (practically all the blue and green sprays I have). After cutting them out I stamped the flourish and some extra petals on the leftover inky bits and cut them out too. After assembling and adhering them on the card I added a touch of Glossy Accents, and while it was drying I did a bunch of stamping on the envelope, cleaned up my desk and wrote this.

My other embossing folder experiment with glossy gel ended up as a transparent pocket in my art journal, you can find the post here (it's in Swedish, but lot's of pics).

I also tried the Gel on a stamp. Not being sure it would come of I took a faulty stamp for which I have a replacement. The stamp turned out to be so deeply etched that the gel didn't turn transluscent after a couple of days of drying! But it came of nicely, caught lots of detail (and all the dust that happened to be in the part torn off in the mail)... this might be a way to clean stamps! Next time I'll try colouring the gel before spreading it on the stamp... and perhaps a shallower stamp too :)

I really like this smooth side, the texture shows through the gel...