Wednesday 19 September 2012

Decorate your layout backgound with gesso!



Happy Wednesday everyone,

This week we are going to get our fingers messy – with gesso!


Here’s a list of materials I used:
I started with creating the page background: I wanted to make the decorated center panel slightly smaller than the dark patterned paper background so I trimmed 10 cm off from the edge of one white cardstock sheet. Then I took my jar of gesso and using an old bonus card I wiped the entire cardstock panel with white gesso. This layer of gesso would glue my decorative strips on the background.
 
Using my favourite decorative strip die 'Regal Edging' I die-cut five strips of white cardstock and placed them on the gesso layer. Then I wiped them over with another layer of gesso, covering the entire panel. I wanted the beautiful details to show perfectly so I rubbed the strips with my fingers removing excessive gesso from the images.
 
 
 
When the panel was completely dry I inked the panel with three different red shades of Distress Ink. A layer of gesso does not absorb water-soluble inks so I lightened and mixed the colours by wiping them with a baby wipe. At that point I still felt that something was missing so I finished the panel with stamping text spots with brown StazOn ink. Note: If you want to stamp detailed images like text on a gesso layer remember to use non-soluble inks like StazOn. Water-soluble inks will not give a perfect result!
 
 
 
 
The lovely photo frames were cut with Framelits die ‘Heart w/Crown’ and I used the same die to cut my black and white photos, too. I adhered the decorated panel in the middle of the dark patterned paper and wrote the journal with white gel pen on the background. I finished the page with writing the title (6 vuotta - 6 years) with alpha stickers, attaching two strips of lace on the sides of the panel (Tacky Glue worked great for this) and gluing a few small beads with Glossy Accents on the page.
 
Finished!
 
 
 
 
 
I hope this tutorial inspires you to take out our favourite Sizzix dies and to create your own decorated page backgrounds.
 
Have a nice week!
 
 

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