Bleached Cards & Mini Tutorial

I have had a pretty busy today! First it was club day down the coast and today I arranged to take a friend down for her first time which was fun - strange to have company on the drive there and back but very nice. Our project for today was to use bleach on our cards, it has been a while since I have had the bleach out to play so it was fun to revisit this technique.

If you haven't as yet used bleach in your stamping here are a few pointers on using bleach to create your cards.

1. Use fresh bleach! Bleach does have the tendency to go off even in their opaque containers.

2. Make sure you work in a well ventilated area - I like to work so a fan is behind me and blowing the fumes away from me. It's also a good idea to wear old clothes just in case they get bleach on them.

3. Make sure your work area is protected!!!!

4. Stamp your image onto colored card - you can emboss if you wish but it is not necessary. The card at the top was stamped using brilliance ink and left unembossed. The card down the bottom was embossed.

5. Expect the unexpected. Experiment with different colors of card and even different brands of the same color. In the samples included here the area that I bleached turned white, but this can vary from cardstock to cardstock.

6. For an outline image stamp your image on your cards as per #3 and then paint parts of the image using a paintbrush to apply the bleach. You can also use the aquawash type brushes - the ones you normally fill with water - buy a second to use for bleach - make sure the bleach is fresh each time you use it.

7. You can either leave your bleached outline image as is or if desired you can color them using your coloring medium of choice.

8. Fill a spray bottle with bleach and spritz your card with it (this is how I got the background on the top card which was originally the same color and the piece the tulips are stamped on) Again the results will differ depending on the fineness of your spray.

9. Create a temporary stamp pad using folded paper towel (place this on a plate or plastic container of some sort). Add your bleach and use this as a stamp pad to stamp your images directly onto your card. Remember to clean you stamps well when you have finished stamping. (this is how the flower background was created in the bottom card).

I think I have covered most of the things you need to know to get started stamping with bleach, most important have fun. These are two quick cards I made up when I came home after creating a number of bleach pieces.

Recipe for cards:
Stamps: Tulips - Outlines Rubber Stamps; Girls - Paperbag Studio; Verse - Hero Arts; Flower - unknown
Card: Hot Pink Card; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Clear Embossing Powder; Bleach; Ribbon; Metal Charm.

Do you like the ribbon I used on the top card, my friend who I went with told me about some ribbon on sale today at a local store so after club we went shopping - 40 rolls of ribbon for $28 (that is cheap in Australia believe me). We also found some other ribbons in another store and then went elsewhere to find some card, charms and buttons - all in all it was a fun day!