Topflight Stamps: Gel Print Variations on a Sphynx Cat Theme

Greetings! It's Kathi here with my weekly post. This week my TFS teammates and I are exploring the Gel Press. This was a great exercise for me as I'm not totally comfortable with it yet. I decided that I wanted to use my underused Distress Oxide inks with Gel Press, so I watched a fabulous video by Lindsay Weirich, aka The Frugal Crafter. I learned a ton and once I got started, I kept going!

Essentially, what I did was to smoosh different colors of Distress Oxide ink onto my Gel Press, blend them using a brayer, place either a stencil or sequin waste onto the inked Gel Press, brayer another color overtop, remove the stencil, place a piece of cardstock/paper onto the press, and pull a print. Then I'd press the ink pad onto the outline side of the embossing folders, press the inked embossing folder gently onto the Gel Press, place the paper back onto the the press, and pulling a second layer. The printed cardstock was then heat set and some ink was sponged over stencils/sequin waste onto the prints to add more details and/or color.

Here are two photos of some (not all) of the prints I pulled using the Gel Press, Distress Oxide ink pads, the Twirling Tendrils and Totally Dotty stencils by AALL and Create, a few other stencils, sequin waste, and embossing folders. I pulled all the prints on white cardstock, except one where I used journal ledger paper. The ledger paper one is the middle of the bottom photo.

I decided that I wanted to use the Sphynx Cat Unmounted Rubber Stamp by Katzelkraft as the focal point of a set of three cards.

Here are the cards!

On this "Hello" Eclipse card, the cat was stamped with VersaMark ink then heat embossed with regular detail black embossing powder and used the "Meow" speech bubble stamp from the Purrfect Day Clear Stamp Set by Heffy Doodle, which was stamped with Onyx Black VersaFine Ink.

This card used sparkly black embossing powder. Sadly, the sparkle shows up as white flecks. Bummer. I used white flecked black cardstock as a matting layer and it photographed a bit oddly. The sentiment is from Paper Artsy's fun and fabulous Zinski #47 (Cats) Rubber Cling Mounted Stamp Set.