2016 #23 To Bleach or not To Bleach {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic 23: Bleach Techniques

Hi everyone, Lesley here this evening to share a couple of cards I made for the current topic of bleaching techniques, using the wonderful Sara Naumann stamps. I have used bleach in the past to ‘paint’ colour out of images and to stamp with but I find it takes a lot of testing of card, ink and even the bleach to some extent, to get the colour you want so I decided to go down the ‘faux bleach’ route to create the backgrounds for some cards. I have to say I’m not too keen on the smell of bleach either, lol!

I began by blending some Distress Inks and Adirondack Inks onto various papers and card and then I tried removing some of the inks by damping a piece of kitchen towel with bleach and using it as a pad to ‘ink’ up the stamp and also using a piece of Cut n Dry foam through a stencil. PS018 Next I used a wet wipe as a pad to ‘ink’ up the stamp and again through the stencil. The stamp is from ESN13

ESN13

The top row of samples were done solely with the wet wipes and I was really pleased with these especially on matte coated card. The bottom row were done with bleach and these were less than successful, either barely removing the ink or changing the colour to something I didn’t want. The old book pages didn’t work very well with bleach or water.

One of the poor samples was stamping bleach onto an old book page. Now this book is one I found when we were emptying Mum’s bungalow and it’s about 80+ yrs old and falling to bits. It’s extremely discoloured but boy, is the paper tough! It drank in the ink but didn’t hardly budge from the bleach so I used it to stamp the star using black Archival Ink.

I cut it out and stuck it to a piece of canvas I had covered with Vermillion Archival.

I then stuck the canvas to some thin cardboard and cut the star out again. Next I applied Prima Clear Crackle Paste and left it to cure. I then watered down some PaperArtsy Gold Metallic paint and brushed it over the crackle, working it into the tiny cracks before wiping it back with a wet wipe. When it was dry I lightly applied some Classic Treasure Gold.

I cut a square from one of the background pieces I liked, inked the edges with the Vermillion then ghost stamped the 3 stars (Hot Picks 1501) using first Vermillion then Black Archival and then the word Believe which I cut from a quote on ESN15. I can still match the word up with the rest of the quote when I want to stamp it all. I attached the square to a base card and finally adhered the canvas star with 3D foam.

ESN15

Card 2. 

I really loved the background that came from using Slate and Cloudy Blue Adirondack Inks on the matte coated card and decided it would look nice with a little sparkle as a Christmas card.

I began by stamping Sara’s star onto white card. I first inked up with Versamark and then again with the Slate Adirondack before stamping the image and then I heat embossed with some new embossing powder I bought last week. It’s clear with very fine glitter and course white granules which gives and nice snowy effect. I used the same powder on some little wooden stars.

I don’t have any of Sara’s lovely Christmas stamp sets so I found one of my favourite Hot Pick sentiments (Xmas 08) and stamped it onto my background piece with Versamark ink and embossed with white. I used a Versamark dabber to apply ink randomly round the edges and then embossed with the sparkly, snowy powder.

Xmas 08

I attached the piece to a card blank, then adhered Sara’s star with 3D foam and the wooden stars with matte gel to finish off.

Well that’s it from me for this year, lol! I hope you enjoyed my ‘cheat’ bleached cards and all the other fabulous inspiration from the rest of this topic’s contributors and that they encourage you to have a go yourself. 

Lesley

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Beautiful cards  Lesley, i love that you 'cheated' and showed us these great effects that don't use bleach at all. Fantastic for anyone who is sensitive to the smell of bleach. ~Darcy

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