VIDEO: Twofer Gel Press Technique + 30% off Coupon!

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Okay - was this just a Lutheran thing? A Texas thing? When I was little, we lived next door to our Pastor, who was Norwegian. We attended a Lutheran church, and I don't remember if we did it every week, but quite frequently there were potlucks in the church hall. 

I've always been freaked out by potlucks, and have many food poisoning stories to prove it, but there were two things that EVERYONE found irresistible - banana pudding - DUH - and those delicious little church meatballs. 

Now mind you - I did not know the ingredients of said meatballs. I just knew they were delicious. There was also a similarly delicious warming tray full of Little Smokies! And why, might you ask, were they similarly delicious? Well, that is because they share the same "secret" ingredient. 

GRAPE JELLY

I kid you not. And now that we have the internet, of course I have come to learn that other people, too have had the insane 70s classic - church meatballs. Now a lot of dishes in that era reflect that people were still infatuated with "convenience foods" like sauces, and also there was definitely a crockpot heyday in the 70s, and these were a SOLID crockpot dish for a potluck. Campbell's was busy coming up with cream soup ALL THE THINGS during this era, and so it was also a golden age of casseroles - King Ranch being the winner where I grew up and still one of my faves. 

But those meatballs - they cast a long shadow in history. Have you had them? Do you still make them? I have half a mind to try them again with a homemade chili sauce, as I absolutely cannot stomach the idea of buying Heinz Chili Sauce. I don't even want to know what that is. And I'd never let it touch one of my delicious homemade meatballs. But I'm not ashamed to admit I ate many a meatball at church potlucks, and I found them quite tasty. 

When you break the recipe down to its essential components, to me it's got similar bones to some of my favorite Korean dishes - like bulgogi (I love Hyosun and mine her website often - she's really great about doing education in her recipes - I've learned a lot!) It has a higher fat content meat, a sweet element, a salty element, and a little spice. So if you can calm down after reading the recipe uses grape jelly and realize that a lot of cuisines use sweet glazes for savory dishes, you can really appreciate it for what it was - a salt, fat, acid heat triumph in a crockpot. Thanks church ladies!

So today I have a twofer technique for you with the Gel Press, as you'll see in the video. And I just used the same process I used here to create the resulting shaker card, but with lace instead of packaging. In today's video you'll learn how to mix paint on the Gel Press with your Taylored Expressions Gel Printing Kit, use lace to print with, and then your freebie is the shaker!

I finished this card with this beautiful flower, simply colored. I sketched lines around the sentiment to match the style of the floral. I used these sequins for the shaker.

For this card, I used the flower from this stamp set, and the sentiment from the same set, and these sequins. You will see the prints made with this in the video.

Now on these cards, I used the prints. On the left - a normal application of paint on the Gel Press. See the spots of color? On the right, the exact same paint, but mixed as I show you in the video. The florals are from this set, and I used this super fun splatter stamp in black for the background.

Here's the video! Click here to watch on YouTube.

Taylored Expressions Gel Printing Kit [ TE ] 5x7 Gel Press [ SSS | BLIC ] In Your Corner [ TE ] Sketchbook Florals [ TE ] Splatter Background [ TE ] Sequin Mix - Spiked Cider – Picket... [ PFS ] Sequin Mix - Blueberry Mojito –... [ PFS ] Floral Glass Craft Mat — Glassboard... [ GLS ] Ultra Smooth Copy Paper [ AMZUS | AMZUS ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | SSS | ELH | MFT ] Purell Advanced Hand Sanitizer... [ AMZUS ]

So what's your fave retro potluck dish? Waldorf "salad"? Jello mold? OH - you know what else was great back then? Eagle Magic Cookie Bars! Phenomenal! Also way too sweet - that's the kind of thing you can only enjoy as a kid I think. But anyway, leave your faves in the comments!

Now for the exciting part! As part of their Black Friday promotion, the Glassboard Studio peeps have given me an exclusive coupon for 30% off! This is the mat you see in my videos - it's magnetic, and the little chess piece magnets are awesome - super strong for stenciling, flattening out cards, gluing things, etc. I love the magnetic feature - I wasn't sure it would matter to me, but it does. The mats come in different sizes with pretty art on them - I have the one shown here as you see in my videos. In addition to the craft mats, they have other glass boards - ones you can write on, art ones, and ones where you can create your own, so it's not just craft mats.

So if you want to buy yourself an early Christmas present for 30% off use coupon code (sitewide)

UNDERSTANDBLUE30

This coupon starts today and goes through the 30th of November!

Have a great weekend! Loveyameanitbye.

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