Cut It Up

Create jewel-toned color gel skins and cut them into shapes to add sparkle to your art. Beautifully textured and opaque shapes will give your art that extra zing. These shapes can be made using acrylic gels or pastes. Depending on the gel or paste used, you can create texture, opacity or transparent color. Any of the following gels will work: pumice gel, glass bead gel, tinted soft gel or a gel you make yourself. Gloss gels will result in the clearest skin, and pastes will give you opaque skins. I love working with light modeling paste, heavy modeling paste and fiber paste.

TECHNIQUE ONE: Cut It

You can make sheets of acrylic skins with any acrylic paint, pastes or gels. You can even embed objects such as buttons, mica, beads, sand or whatever else you can think of into the wet gels and pastes.

Step 1

Spread out your paint, paste or gel onto a polypropylene piece of plastic. Add glitter, bead gel, sand, etc., if desired. Let dry.

Step 2

While the medium is still on the plastic, cut it into desired shapes and glue paint side down on desired surface using polymer medium or gel. Let dry.

Step 3

Peel off the plastic.

JEWEL BOX

Sandra Duran Wilson

TECHNIQUE TWO: Iron It

This technique is great if you need a lot of small shapes. It works only if you will be putting the pieces onto an acrylic painting.

Step 1

Create your gel skins on a piece of plastic, as previously described, or use a plastic cutting board for added texture. If you use a cutting board, don’t use it in the kitchen again—keep it in the studio. Let the gel skins dry completely.

Step 2

Peel the skin off the plastic or cutting board and cut it into small shapes. Place the shapes onto your acrylic surface.

Step 3

Put a piece of parchment paper over the small pieces and use a medium-hot dry iron to fuse the shapes to the acrylic surface. Let cool and remove the parchment paper. No glue necessary!

SONG OF THE SEASONS

Sandra Duran Wilson