Technique Tip: Bleached Bug

Here's something a little different. Usually we are concerned about adding color. This technique is all about removing color. The wings of the dragonfly have been bleached!

Yes you heard right. I used an AquaPainter because I wanted better control of exactly where the bleach goes. The Aquapainter delivers the bleach in a controlled way and I love the way the fibers on this tool stay together in a nice sharp point. I have in the past used some of the cheaper paint tools (the knock offs) - I owned them before I ever joined Stampin'UP! But the quality of the "wanna be's" doesn't even come close to what Stampin'UP! sells. The plastic body is thicker and you have better control of the flow. The bristles are more lush and have a better point. And (this is really important: the gasket is very high quality so it can hold bleach without damaging the parts. I leave water in my Aqua painter indefinitely without any worry of a leak. You can do the same with bleach, with no damage to the Aquapainter - I know this because I've done it. But, you don't want to leave the bleach in because the bleach will actually begin to deteriorate chemically when its exposed to light. So leaving it out for a week, you come back to something considerably less potent.

The dragon fly is from a Stamp Set called Bugs and Kisses. This is such a cute set - one of my favorites. To make this card I heat embossed the dragon fly in black. The bleach won't affect the embossed lines but would take out any color you tried to stamp with. BE CAREFUL painting the wings. The bleach pulls out the color. Here the Always Artichoke cardstock bleaches to a lovely yellow. If I'd added more bleach it would have gotten much lighter. Now, the caution again - BE CAREFUL! For 2 reasons. (1) Any tiny fleck of bleach that gets on your clothes will permanently alter them, yes I have personal experience with this. (2) Any tiny fleck of bleach that gets somewhere on the card you didn't plan for will permanently alter the card in that unwanted place.

You can place an order for these items or any Stampin'UP! product from my SU website.
Remember to check out the Clearance Rack too - there are some amazing deals there.

Thanks for checking the blog, contact me if there's any way I can help you with your stamping.

Happy Stamping
--Katie

Holiday Card Idea #9

Well I really had fun playing with this card and I'm so excited to share the results. I wanted to use the beautiful angel image from Angelic Joy and I wanted to put her on a dark background that suggested a night sky.  One way to do this would have been to stamp on white and cut out the image. But here's what I did instead. I embossed the image in silver and then bleached out the image - and that's all I did - no extra colors! I got all the lovely shading by using more bleach in some areas than others. Actually I let it dry and then went back and re-did some areas. I think I did her hands and face 3 or 4 times. Each time I added a little more bleach it got darker in that spot, but just because it was wet.  Then it got even lighter when it dried. Here is part of the trick, to apply the bleach I used my Aqua Painter. The bristles on it are specially shaped to do detail work like this. I don't think it would have come out as nice if I'd tried using a regular paint brush. I do keep one Aqua Painter dedicated just for use with bleach but I DO NOT store the bleach in the Aqua Painter. Partly to avoid damage to the seal on the Aqua Painter but also because the bleach goes bad if exposed to light. You need to start with FRESH bleach!

I was so happy with this and the way the colors turned out on the card above.  The paper I used was Night of Navy  and it bleached out to something that was such a good match for Perfect Plum  that I used Perfect Plum ink and Perfect Plum paper as a framing layer.

If you try the bleaching technique though you do have to test the papers. I made a trade card once for convention and did bleaching on Always Artichoke. The papers were from 2 different packages and some of it bleached to a whitish color and the other package bleached to a yellow color.  Both looked good, just saying you have to test to see what happens. I did try the angel on Not Quite Navy  and got a much more yellow image with that.  That looks good too. It seems like it might be a match for Soft Suede - I just haven't had time to play with that yet..

The angel looked so great on the card that I had to make the rest of it really special too so I sprayed Silver Foil Smooch Spritz on the Night of Navy and sprayed Vanilla Shimmer Smooch Spritz on the Perfect Plum.  I also used the little snow flakes from the Confetti Stamp Set as a background around the angel and I embossed them with Iridescent Ice. 

Supplies: Silver Embossing Powder Versamark Ink Pad Heat Tool Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder Silver Cord Dimensionals AquaPainter Silver Cord Stamp Sets: Angelic Joy (Holiday Mini) Confetti (Big Idea Book and Catalog) Colors: Night of Navy Perfect Plum

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I am here to help you.  Please call or email me if you have any questions about this card or anything related to stamping.  Let me know if you want to order any of the supplies for this card.  I want to be your demonstrator.  Your business is appreciated and helps to support this website.

--Katie