Love.

This one was made as a sample for my local store and will be featured as part of a class that I'll teach mid-April. In the full layout photo it is hard to see the texture created on the background but as we go through the close-ups I'll tell you a bit more about the process. For now, please note that along the outer edge of the page that there are three distinct colors. 

To start with, I smeared gel medium on a stamp and applied it to the paper. I repeated it a few times around the page. I put the gel medium on thick enough that most of the image has been lost but it left some peaks and such that created the texture you see here and acts as a resist. It should be noted that less gel medium leaves the stamped image more intact but also flattens the texture a bit, pluses and minuses to each technique.

When the gel medium dried I painted on a light brown acrylic paint and then a Tim Holtz metallic paint dauber. After each of those coats, wipe the paint off the gel medium to reveal the underlying paper. 

You'll see in this close-up how the paper is visible in some areas, I had to tweak the colors in the photo a bit to make it visible (dumb metallic paints made it hard to photograph).