 Hi everyone, it's Vicky here and welcome back to another art journal layout today I'm going to play on my 8x8 disc bound journal This is watercolor paper and I'm going to play with my gel plate The gel plate that I'm using today is by ranger and it's quite large is 9x11 I'm removing the plastic protector from the top, but I'm going to leave the one underneath asses Now I'm going to work on an 8x8 page Which means that it's going to fit nicely on top of my gel plate And I'm going to start applying my acrylic paint for this you can use any type of acrylic paint that you have You will see that I switch from one acrylic brand to another just to show you that it really doesn't matter You're also going to need a brayer Now you can use of course different tools to get some texture before you pull a print such as This one or you can apply your paint with a spatula You can use little silicone tools to draw on your jelly plate Anything works really and if you don't have all these different tools, you can just use the back of a paintbrush It works pretty fine as well Now I'm using my spatula to apply some paint This helps me to control how much paint I apply but at the same time these are actually my acrylic dabbers and I don't have a flip top which makes it not easy for me to apply The paint on top of my gel plate. That's why I used the spatula So I'm going to use the brayer and apply my paint And then I'm going to pull a print Just make sure that they are nicely blended there And I'm not going to cover up completely the whole surface since I'm just going to be working on an 8x8 paper Now depending on the paper that you are working with you will see that you get different results The one I'm using here is watercolor paper and it has a lot of texture Which means that I will not end up with a really flat and really vibrant look Which I absolutely love but for example if you work on Bristol paper, which is really smooth You will see that you get different results Now I'm going to place another page underneath so probably you can see better Where I'm working on and you can see the colors even better now Of course you can use what paint is left on your gel plate to pull even more prints Which is actually something I did but I'm not going to show you every pull I did on this video I'm going to concentrate and show you only the ones that I did while working on this specific project Now I have applied some color only on one area of my plate and I have spread it out with my brayer And now I'm using one of the plastic comps to create some texture in different areas Now of course remember that you can use a plastic comp that you may have at home You can create your very own tools The tools that I have are really fun to use and make your life easy But you can improvise and be creative and use tools that you already have So you can see with this blue color. I'm also adding some border around my page And I'm also going to clean my comp in one area of my project And again, don't forget that you can pull even more prints since you have all the paints and all the tools are already dirty Now I am going to apply some green paint here on another area of my gel plate I'm spreading it out with a brayer and I'm working with a small brayer this time So I am trying to keep my paint concentrated in just one place Now I'm using one of those silicone tools and I'm adding some marks on my paint and again I'm going to play with my comps I really love playing with my acrylic paints on a gel plate because you never know what it's going to look It's so difficult to control and sometimes when it comes to art journaling It's always nice to have some surprise there So I'm working in different areas again adding a little bit of color And I'm going to call this background done when it comes to gel printing And sometimes you get beautiful results on your scrap paper. This is the one that I was cleaning my brayer Now I'm going to use some black suit This is the stress oxide ink and I'm going with a blending tool all around the edges Darkening them up. You know By now if you are following my art journal videos that I always like to somehow create a frame from my projects It feels more finished to me and I love the look And I also think that when you add the black borders around your project It helps the colors pop even more. Now I'm going to use this large stencil by Darkroom door Which is full of stars absolutely adorable and so versatile And I'm applying some yellow acrylic paint over those stars in different areas I'm going for a Magical background today, and I wanted to create a kind of a sky but stay away flow from The usual blues that I work with so I decided to go with oranges and reds as you see as you can see In the finished project you will see that I will end up having more stars because I went back and added even more With my stencil, but for now I am adding some white splashes. This is white jesso that I have diluted with water This is an acrylic white marker. It's actually the deco marker by Pebeo But there are so many different brands of acrylic markers that you can use such as the Posca ones Or you can use the ranger ones although the ranger ones have a very fine tip So I use them for other purposes Now I want to create little pieces of paper with acrylic paint and for that I'm using a small gel plate I'm working with acrylic paint again mixing a couple of colors. These are yellows and greens and this time I'm working with deco media Acrylic paint so you can see that pretty much anything works on gel plate And The paper that I'm working with now is a crystal paper that is really smooth and you get a really lovely And flat finished look really vibrant If you compare it to the look that I got when I was working with a watercolor paper for my background Now I'm going to create a few of those little backgrounds And I'm planning to do some stamping here and then do my collage. So I'm just preparing my backgrounds Now I'm going to use a couple of blue shades And you don't have to be neat with your brayer. Look how I'm going to do the brain now just to get a really mixed look For a more interesting background Now for my focal points. I'm going to use stamps by stamp and those these are the magical horses And I'm going to stamp a couple of them. I like that these stamp set comes with a stencil I'm not going to use it today But I wanted to show you that you do get the positive and the negative of those horses Hopefully you can see them here Now I'm going to use my stamping platform and I'm going to stamp both my horses at the same time and I'm going to stamp everything with my black archival ink. I do have some repositionable tape at the top of my platform So I don't need to use the magnets which makes my life really easy So I have stamped my image a couple of times just to get a lovely impression And now we'll go ahead and use the next two backgrounds to stamp a couple of wings for each of my horses Now I'm going to use the matching dyes to cut out all my images. I am securing everything with purple tape and Of course if you don't have the dyes, you can always cut them with your scissors What I love about the Stampentus dyes, though, is that they cut out exactly where those black lines are So they don't give you a white border all around your images And to tell you the truth, I don't like that sticker look when it comes to our geni-link But I don't mind when it comes to card making. So anyway I am using some foam squares at the back of my wings just to pop them up and The one is stuck at the back of the horse. So I end up having quite a dimension there Now those horses are not stuck down there yet So I decided first to stamp the sentiment to make sure that I have enough space for it And then I'm going to stick the horses down for my sentiment I'm going with make today magical and I'm going to stamp it using a concordant ninth Lovely alphabet stamp set. I'm just stamping a letter by letter And this is a lovely alphabet that I have been using for a long time It's called sophisticated script stamp set and I like it because when you stamp out the letters next to each other They look as if you have a beautiful handwriting I'm using my white glue. This is Nouveau Deluxe to stick my horses down And now I'm going to add some doodling and some extra color on my horses by using my deco markers Again, these are acrylic markers. I am using the ones with a 1.2 Knit, but they come in all different sizes of nibs So I'm just switching from color to color making sure that everything matches nicely on each and every horse And you can go of course as colorful as you like. I like that. This is acrylic paint, which means that it's Going to cover up completely what's underneath And it's going to stand out So you see here I'm using yellow on top of blue and it doesn't turn green It stays yellow and it completely covers up what's underneath lovely and opaque color Now I'm using a fine tip marker to go around my stars just to give them more to help them stand out more and Also notice that I have also added some white highlighting on my letters And I'm going to show you a really easy shadowing technique that you can do I'm using the scribble sticks and I'm going to apply some color around my horses Just only in areas that I need to deepen up the Shadows there and now with a wet paint brush I'm going over that color Which is going to help it spread out and it's going to create those shadows This really helps the horses to stand out against the background I'm not going to do it all around the horse just in the different areas here and there And you can of course do the same thing for the stars if you like I'm just going to do it for the horses in these areas And of course you can't have a magical project without some shine. So I'm using these iridescent stars by Studio Katia by the way, you will find everything linked down below just like always So I've spread out a few of those stars on my background And then I'm going to use my white glue and stick everything down By the way, the white glue is going to dry completely clear So nothing is going to show at the end underneath the stars And here is my finished project Hopefully you can see all the shine and the dimension that I got And all that's left to do is to put it back on my 8x8 disc palm journal And you can see some of the pages that I already made for every one of those pages There is a video available on my youtube channel So that was a project for today. Here are some close-up photos I hope you had fun that you got inspired Don't forget to leave me a comment and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already Thank you all so much and have a lovely day