Get in the Holiday (Sweepstakes) Spirit with Gift Bags, Tags, and Cards

Happy Holidays, everyone! Our Cloth Paper Scissors Holiday Sweepstakes kicks off today, and that means you have a chance to win fantastic prizes from companies you love: Gelli Arts^®, Therm O Web, Grafix, Ranger, and Testors^®, plus our own Cloth Paper Scissors, North Light, and ArtistsNetworkTV brands. These prize packages are outstanding, and all you need to do for a chance to win one is sign up! From now until November 15^th we’ll choose one winner a day, so don’t miss this fantastic opportunity. Who doesn’t want more cool art supplies?!

Today and tomorrow (November 8^th and 9^th) you’ll have a chance to win two prizes from Gelli Arts^®, the company that produces the fantastic Gel Printing Plates that make monoprinting so enjoyable and easy. Today’s prize is a set of four new Printing Kits, each with a different theme, and containing all the materials you need to start printing right away. Tomorrow’s prize is two sets of Gelli Arts Premium Acrylic Paint, plus three stencils, an 8″ x 10″ Gelli printing plate, and a set of mini printing plates. Here’s Cloth Paper Scissors managing editor Barbara Delaney to tell you about the terrific projects she made with the Gelli Arts Stamping & Printing Kit and the paints!

Playing with the kit got my creative gears in motion. Foam sheets, a brayer, three bottles of paint, a Gelli plate, punchinella, parchment paper, and eyelash yarn provided everything I needed for some great prints.

I decided to decorate some small ready-made canvas gift bags, and this 5″ x 5″ Gelli plate was the perfect size. I spread blue paint from the kit onto the plate with the brayer, wrote the word “Joy” with a small, flat stick, and added a few snowflakes. (I wrote the word backward, so that it was correct when it printed.) I love the paint. It spread smoothly with the brayer, and the colors are vibrant. I was very happy with how well the print came out.

For the second bag, I drew stars into one of the foam sheets with a pencil with a dull point. I brayered some red paint onto the foam, and then pressed the sheet onto a bag for another print. I traced the stars with a permanent marker, and hand lettered “Reach for the Stars.”

This was so much fun, I couldn’t stop! I tried some other paint colors and ideas. For the green bag, I wrapped the eyelash yarn around the brayer and brayered color right onto the bag. I then printed circles with a bottle cap and the end of a pencil. I used another foam sheet for the print on the pink bag, then used a bottle cap to add circles to the straps. I really liked the way the “Joy” bag came out earlier, so I printed it again with another cool color (Freshwater) from the Gelli Arts paint set.

Inspired by the great colors in the Bright Colors set, I decided to print an entire page in my art journal. I placed punchinella on top of the Gelli plate, brayered over it with paint, removed the punchinella, and printed the plate onto the page, overlapping designs until I filled the page. I let the paint set on the page for a few minutes, then used just the punchinella with a cosmetic wedge to add some white paint here and there over the top. Because the bottom layer wasn’t completely dry, there was some color mixing, which added even more interest.

I really liked the way the page turned out. Once it dried, I punched some tags. This made me think of the phrase “Tag, you’re it,” which inspired the card.

With these four printing kits and the great paint sets and tools available as part of our Holiday Sweepstakes, you’ll have the materials and inspiration for all kinds of printing adventures. ~ Barb

It’s Jeannine again! On Friday, November 10^th the sweepstakes prize package is $100 worth of Rebekah Meier Designs mixed-media supplies from Therm O Web. I’ve been working with these materials for some time now, and they are amazing—so versatile and easy to use with tons of your favorite mixed-media supplies to create art journal pages, collages, cards, and more. You’ll find a fantastic holiday-themed mandala project from Rebekah in the November/December issue of Cloth Paper Scissors that incorporates her products, so be sure not to miss that!

To make some holiday cards and tags I used a Mixed Media Adhesive Sheet, which is the perfect blank slate for mixed-media artists. I started by stamping text randomly all over the sheet in permanent gray stamping ink, and then covered the sheet with some light turquoise acrylic paint. When that dried I stenciled a design in a few spots, then dry brushed various colors of paint across the sheet. There’s a little texture to these sheets, which gives them a unique look and feel.

I then stenciled a modern abstract design, this time using spray ink. Are you keeping track of how many supplies and mediums you can use on these sheets? Next, I splattered watered-down calligraphy ink and paint over everything.

For a final touch, I brushed on some of Rebekah’s Mixed Media Medium in a few spots, waited until it was tacky, then burnished Transfer Foil in Old Gold. The foil adheres to the medium, giving you spots of gorgeous metallic shine. If you’ve never tried transfers foils, they are a game changer. Such a beautiful effect.

I love that you can decorate a big sheet and cut it up to use for a ton of projects. I made a holiday card and tag, stamping bold designs with paint over pieces of the cut-up sheet. Since the sheets are self-adhesive, I just peeled off the backing and adhered them to cardstock. No glue, no mess!

Don’t miss your opportunity to win these amazing prize packages in our sweepstakes, so you can make your own spectacular art with these products. Sign up today! Good luck, everyone!