An AMAZING Creative Journey at CHA Anaheim!

Happy Wednesday everyone! This month has flown past especially the past week and a half. Back on January 9th, I traveled coast-to-coast to attend the Winter CHA in Anaheim, CA to work as a demonstrator in the Amazing Crafting Products/Alumilite Booth.

Going from east to west leaves you feeling like a superhero with a rush of adrenaline... and then the whiplash of jetlag catches you on the return flight. I think I slept for three days when I got home. It was great leaving the NOT-SO-SUNSHINY state for a few since the polar vortex has been leaving days on end of drizzly overcast blah parked over us and the weather was perfect in sunny CA {not a cloud in the sky}!

I was working with my super fantastic team members at the Amazing Crafting Products/Alumilite booth... here's a little bit of what I was demoing. I had so much fun and the four days went by so quickly - it was great meeting artists and fellow lovers of these AMAZING products!

I brought with me a few of my Amazing DIY No-Gelatin Printing Plates and some paint for demoing. I was pleasantly surprised how many people visited to see how the monoprinting technique works. I totally want to cover my table in Amazing Mold Rubber now. It's the perfect non-stick surface to work on with resin... and a wonderful work surface for painting, too!

I applied layers of Liquitex Acrylic paints and pressed in resin cast buttons, shapes and various samples we had made throughout the day. I stamped circles using our mixing cups and bottle lids.

Quick and easy mixed media art with a handful of supplies and in a matter of minutes I had about a dozen painted monoprints {on the back of our sales sheets – LOL}.

  

I added Alumilite Metallic Powders and Ranger Perfect Pearls while acrylic paint layers are drying.

I'm so excited because I came up with a totally
"BRILLIANT" idea – a brand new technique!
How do you like our sporty purple shirts the owner of Alumilite brought for us?

Since I had quite a buildup of paint and color on my Amazing DIY No-Gelatin Printing Plate... I could have easily added more wet paint and pulled off onto paper or by using strips of clear packing tape. But I had an IDEA! I wanted to get it off in one pull... fused together with Amazing Casting Resin – giving me a painted resin sheet.

Detail of the first layer of Amazing Casting Resin beginning to cure. It was taking a bit longer than expected because it was such a thin pour {to be expected}, and the Amazing Mold Rubber slab stays quite cool... so we improvised on the fly!

I gently separated the two-plys of a paper towel and placed one into the uncured resin. This immediately helped accelerate the curing as it thickened the layer. As it cured I prepared another batch of Amazing Casting Resin and poured on top, then added the remaining ply of paper towel. This did the trick in getting it to harden faster. It was near the end of the day and we had quite a few gathered to watch – all very excited to see the results so waiting until the next morning wasn't going to do

The "LIVE" reveal!!!

Presenting the first ever Amazing Casting Resin Monoprint pulled from the Amazing DIY No-Gelatin Printing Plate! This has only been tested on a faux gelatin plate made of Amazing Mold Rubber. **PLEASE NOTE** I do not know what the results of this technique would be on an official Gelli Arts® Gel Printing Plate.

Detail of first Amazing Casting Resin monoprint! The Alumilite Gold and Silver Metallic Powders look like silver and gold leafing pressed between the layers of paint! I did experiment the next day with another one on my larger plate... and I toyed around with pouring a thicker layer of Amazing Casting Resin, eliminating the need for the paper towel. Stay tuned for upcoming posts to see what I've done with these resin monoprints!

Special thanks to my new creative pal Keri Sallee for capturing all these photos and video while I was getting messy and enjoying my creative work at CHA!