Playing with Acrylic Skins

I came across Carolyn Dube's ground-breaking video the other day and the proverbial light bulb went off in my creative mind! Carolyn used her left-over poured paints on the gelli plate to create some really cool acrylic skins. I didn't have any left over paint to use up but I did have a bottle of Liquitex pouring medium that I bought years ago and never used.

You can try this technique, even if you don't have a gelli plate. All you need is a non-stick surface like a silicone mat, so you can peel off the skins when they're dry. Even a piece of acetate might be suitable, but I do recommend a silicone mat.

This is what my work surface looked like during the experiments:

Firts, I made some random puddles with the pouring medium mixed with a few drops of  acrylic ink. I dunked the mini gelli plates into the mixture - very much like Carolyn did with her left-over paint and let them dry. There was still plenty of inky medium left on my mat, which I then left to dry as well. If you notice any thin areas on your plates or in your puddles (Carolyn called these "bold spots" LOL!") you can always add a few drops of pouring medium to patch them up. The white areas in my photo show where I added more medium - this is also good for thinning the inks and making the skins more transparent. You can also see some leaves on my mat. These are skeleton leaves, which I dipped in the inky pouring mixture and simply let dry on my mat. It took overnight for everything  to dry completely.

I was so excited, it's a miracle I was able to sleep at all! The next day, I was able to peel my acrylic skins off the gelli plates and the silicone mat quite easily. I was also very happy to see how well the leaves turned out.

You can use the acrylic skins as window clings or you can do all sorts of other fun stuff with them, like die-cutting! If you place the acrylic skins between two sheets of wax paper, you should be able to die-cut them. This may not work if your skins are too thick for your dies, but I was able to cut mine with the Sizzix Thinlits. Here are some of the shapes I cut from my skins:

I used these shapes to decorate some tags and journalling cards I'd created earlier. I used the same inks for the skins, so they co-ordinate perfectly. This wasn't intentional, but those inks just happened to be still sitting on my desk when I tried this experiment! A lucky coincidence! Here are the finished elements, which will be part of a larger project to be unveiled later!

I used found words cut from a book on these tags and cards, which is a favourite technique of mine when I'm lost for words. Here's a closer look at some of them. 

Huge thanks to Carolyn for the inspiration!

Happy experimenting!