April 2012 Creative Challenge:  Stamping with Bleach

Written and Created by PaperCraftCentral Susan

For the April 2012 Creative Challenge, I challenged you to make three cards OR a scrapbook page using the following recipe:

• Use the Stamping with Bleach technique. Your cards or scrapbook page could be about any subject but you had to use bleaching and stamps on your cards
• Use the colours blue, orange and yellow in your cards. You could also use white, black and Crumb Cake as neutral colours if you wished
• Dye or bleach some ribbon or baker's twine to use on your cards somewhere
• Have fun!

Entries closed at midnight on 30th April 2012.

Now maybe it was the thought of making three cards that stopped many of you entering, but Ronell (thank you, Ronell!) sent me a lovely African Bleached Pots card:

Ronell's bleaching was much more subtle than my card sample. Did you use an Water Painter to make your card, Ronell?

I think you would get a much more subtle effect that way and have more accuracy and control over what was bleached than if you used a cotton bud or Q tip for the technique. The Water Painter pen is like using a paint brush as a pencil.

Cleverly done!

By the way, Water Painters are useful tools for watercolouring as well. If you do use these tools for working with bleach, be sure to wash them out well afterwards. The bleach may make the brushes brittle over time and no one wants a brittle paint brush!

How I Made my April 2012 Creative Challenge Sample

I used a cotton bud or Q Tip to apply my bleach to my own flowers. This resulted in a larger and less defined area being bleached compared to Ronell's entry.

So now you have two ways to use bleach on your card or scrapbook page images.

The cardstock I used was Stampin' Up's Pacific Point, So Saffron and Tangerine Tango (all of these colours are now retired, so do check out the colour refresh at Stampin' Up! by going to the catalogue and shopping link in the right hand column of this page) and there was  Beyond the Garden designer series paper (NLA) on my card too.

I dyed the Baker's Twine with the three required colours by sponging and dragging white twine through the three different coloured ink pads, a section at a time.

My images were mounted on Basic White and Basic Black cardstock from Stampin' Up!

Finally I enhanced my Tangerine Tango with ordinary household bleach application, and finished embellishing with some pearls.

See how the bleach turned the orange paper a shade of yellow?

Another way to obtain a kind of bleached effect is to use a chalk marker or white water colouring pencil to highlight different areas of your stamped images. I chose to use the white water colouring pencil from this colour selection on the Shepherd's image to make it look like starlight was softly falling on him.

First I stamped my image in Memento Tuxedo Black on Basic Beige cardstock. Then I highlighted where I thought the starlight would fall on the shepherd and his sheep with a layer of white watercolour pencil.

Can you see where the starlight seems to fall on the shepherd and his sheep?

I then set the white colour with a small amount of water using my Water Painter.

Start with a light layer of colour and small amount of water.  You can always allow each layer to dry before adding another. Use your heat tool to dry the layers if you are in a hurry.

Congratulations again, Ronell, for winning the April 2012 Creative Challenge.

I hope everyone reading will join in on some of the PaperCraftCentral Creative Challenges and stretch your paper crafting skills.

You can also go back over the older challenges and send in an entry for publication. I will always consider your entry for publication on PaperCraftCentral.com if you enter any of my challenges.

And if you need a little more inspiration, here is a tutorial from SplitCoastStampers showing the bleach being used as a stamping medium.

Please note: This technique does not hurt your stamp rubber if you clean the bleach off and condition your stamping rubber straight after use. I use Stampin' Mist from Stampin' Up! for that.

If you have any ideas for how to challenge fellow crafters, do let me know on the Contact Me page, and if you want to be notified about future challenges, do subscribe to my occasional newsletter, Paper Twists.

You may like to try some other challenges by going to the Creative Challenge page, or directly to the challenges listed below:

• Creating a night time scene
• Making over your craft room! A big one, but so rewarding.
• Make a paper shirt for a card

Remember there are many more challenges on PaperCraftCentral.com, all of them designed to stretch your imagination and creativity. You may be new to challenges or you may just need reminding of an old technique you have not tried for awhile. Either way, I hope you keep learning new ways to use your supplies and stamps. It makes crafting more fun, and it gives you a purpose when your ideas may be hard to come by!

And if your mojo really has flown, try these tips.