Paint+Gel Medium+Canvas+Stamps=Fun

I made this canvas for the October Yearbook kit and wanted to share the technique I used.



I gathered the following products:

• Gel Medium in Matte but you could also use the Gloss
  
• Paint
• Stamps (a detailed image won't work as well with this project)
• Paintbrushes
• Sticky Back Canvas
  

I decided to try both kinds of gel medium for this tutorial, just to see the difference between them. The matte is really thick, like flour paste. The gloss is thinner, a lot like Elmer's glue.

I painted each image with a thin layer of the gel, try not to goop the medium! I really gooped the "Happy" stamp on my project, it worked well, but these two stamps worked better if you kept the medium layer thin. I noticed the two varieties went on differently, the glossy was easier to get an even layer.
After you stamp the image, let it dry. You won't see much, I don't even know if you can see it here, but I've added a white box around the larger ampersand stamp. Let it dry very well, for my Happy Canvas, I let the medium dry overnight because it was so goopy.

Once the medium is dry, I got dab of paint and watered it down, about half paint, half water.
And painted over the stamped images. You can see the gooped up one showed up rather well, but the others with a thinner layer are much more subtle. I think either look would work, depending on what you need. I believe this would work on paper as well, but since you use watered down paint, there would be some paper buckling.

Let me know if you try it, it's always fun to see what works and what doesn't. I make way more mistakes this way, but I learn alot!