Gel Medium Exploration

Okay, it's official. My new favorite adhesive is gel medium! I LOVE this stuff! I've seen blog posts, magazine articles and collage art books mention its use in collage, but I hadn't decided to give it a try until just recently. Gel Medium is scrumptious, and you can do so much with it! Extend acrylic paint's drying time, change the TEXTURE of acrylic paint, glue down collage elements, blend inks into a coating of the stuff on your art piece... the list goes on. And I plan to do a lot more exploring of Gel Medium in the future.


Here is an ATC, using an image from Vintage Resources (it's a lovely site and appreciates a donation for your use of thier images). I inked the white cardstock with blue and green inks, cut out the image and attached her with a thin smear of Liquetex brand Matte Gel Medium. Then, I applied another tiny smear of gel medium to the lower part of the ATC, over the photo image and blended blue ink into it while the medium was still slightly wet. Then I stamped the text and swirls with red and black ink and let it dry.



This lovely little girl image is from Oxford Impressions, stamped with black ink onto matte photo paper, hand-colored using a sponge & blue dye ink and attached (with gel medium) to a brayered and stamped background. The egg and "dreams" are likewise stamped and attached. No "fancy" stuff with blending inks into wet gel medium - just straight adhering to the cardstock.

I really love this Gel Medium stuff! I have the matte formula, and I think I'll have to go get the glossy formula, too!