Molding Paste vs Gel Medium

The actual fun we had planned for our play date was using molding past. For me this would have been the first time. Judith had the molding paste and brought it but I, being cheap, wanted to try gel medium to see if I could get out of having to pay for yet another product. The result were VERY interesting.

Judith also brought along two really nice stencils. One was a collection of words related  to art or craft and the other was the dandelion-ish shaped image. It was lovely. She used molding paste only and I mixed my media.

Above and the two below were my tries with molding paste.

Molding paste on the "words".

Judith's work.

Below is an example of the wet gel medium on the right, the wet molding paste on the left. Even wet the molding paste looked the same as when dried. The gel medium changed shape (see below)

Below are both molding paste

The images below were dried over 24 hours. The main differences were that the molding paste dried flat, more matte and a bit more porous. That is the left image. On the right the thick gel medium dried with a dip in the center. The outside edges of the "square" of gel medium dried first and the center dried more slowly leaving a "well' in the center. It should be interesting to see if the well will hold the watercolors. 

You can also see the slick, shiny, and smooth surface of the gel medium. You can almost see the "well".