Inspirational Canvas using Gelatos®

Hi everyone! I love to create with blank canvas - it is such a great way to start a project. The possibilities are endless. To paint or not to paint. Paper or no paper? What mediums do I want to play with?For this canvas I wanted to create something a little less constrained that I normally do. Something pretty free flowing. So I broke out my whole pile of Gelatos® and went to work.

I prepped my canvas with a coat of gesso and let it dry. Then I made a staggered line of color going across the canvas - 3 dots of each color. I just placed the Gelatos® tube on the canvas and twisted slightly to get the dot of color. My color order was very random - what ever color I picked up was next in the line!

I sprayed the line of color with water from my mister, and sprayed, and sprayed some more. I wanted the colors to run together and for the colors to bleed all the way to the bottom of the canvas. I did this over my splat mat - it was very messy! I held the canvas up so that the excess water would drip off of the bottom instead of pool up. When the colors were like I wanted them I used my heat gun to dry the water.

Did you know that by applying heat to a blob of Gelatos® you can acheive a texture very similar to heat embossing? I didn't either! But as I was drying the canvas out, I though - why not see what happens? The Gelatos® dried out and then bubbled up - giving a very cool texture. A word of warning - you can heat it too much :) Let's not say how I found out shall we?

I added tiny paper butterflies and used my PITT® Artist Pen in Black XS to draw the trails behind them and to color their body centers.

I used my Stamper's Big Brush Pen in black to stamp my images and added the detail at the bottom of my flower with PITT® Artist Pen Black XS.

Gotta love the versatility of Gelatos® - I used them to paint the wooden mushroom and to add color to my paper flowers.

Here is a look at the finished project. I can't wait to get a hanger on it and get it on the wall. Unfortunately they never stay in the house for very long. My DD2's friends have a habit of stealing them off the wall in the hall to take to their apartments. This is a super fun and easy technique with Gelatos® and I hope you give it a try.

Products used:

Gelatos®: Blue Metal, Teal Metal, Ochre, Lavender, Red Cherry, Guava, Metallic Grape, Bubble Gum, Silver, Gold, Rose Metal

PITT® Artist Pen Black, S & XS

Stamper's Big Brush Pen, Black #199

Anita is a SAHM whose kids have flown the nest. She is currently driving her husband crazy redecorating the house and hoping to get her first flock of chickens this spring. She keeps busy doing freelance design work for a variety of manufacturers and teaching at the local scrapbook store.

7 Comments

This turned out beautiful!! I love the little dots.

Posted by: Katie Smith | 03/06/2013 at 10:50 AM

This is super cool. I absolutely love my Gelatos and love finding new tricks to use with them. I am always convinced that there can't be another way to use them and then you come up with another one. LOL

Posted by: Jackie | 03/06/2013 at 03:35 PM