Gesso Tutorial + a new layout / Scrap Academy

Hey, friends!  I'm excited to share a gesso tutorial I created for Scrap Academy as a guest teacher.  If you haven't checked out this awesome FB group, you should.  They explore every avenue of scrapbooking, starting at the basics.  There are lots of teachers, videos, projects...any and everything to help the beginning scrapbooker get started.  This phase is all about mixed media.  I created a real-time video explaining gesso and everything you need to know about it for your scrapbook pages.

Here's the video:

I share some sample layouts of mine from the past using different kinds of gesso, different background papers and different products.  At the end of the video, I create this background using clear gesso and distress oxides.

This looks complicated, but I promise it's very easy!  I used thick smooth white cardstock and covered it with clear gesso.  After it dried, I took a rainbow variety of distress oxides and literally smooshed the ink pad right onto the paper, creating a little messy stamped square.  Once they were stamped, I used a wet brush to lightly smudge the edges, causing them to run and blend together.  I'm telling you, anyone can do this!

Here you can see it closely.  I didn't wet all of the squares completely...just a bit around the edges.  You can still see some of the ink pad smudge marks, which create awesome texture and detail.

You could do this with any color scheme you wanted.  My only warning is to be careful with complimentary colors that don't blend together well, like red & green or orange & blue.  I was careful to make sure those colors didn't blend together that much to create a muddy brown.

I used a mix of goodies from my stash to embellish around my black & white photo.  I used some Dear Lizzy die cuts, some Heidi Swapp & Maggie Holmes stickers...and of course my favorite...colored thread :)

See how this easily softens as the water blends it?  The gesso is what allows that to happen.  It allows the colors to run & blend on top of the page before just soaking through and drying.

Here I created a little cluster of flowers and phrases.  My title "lovely" is a Cocoa Vanilla die cut, and I used some Kerri Bradford stamps as well.

 Here are a few more close-ups of all the fun details :)

I hope this inspires you to give gesso and mixed media a try.  It's so much fun to create your own background!  And go check out Scrap Academy.  There is so much to learn there from some very talented scrappy teachers!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great day!