Tuesday 13 September 2016

Bleached Background

I've been wanting to try this bleach technique since seeing Barbara Gray demonstrate it on Hochanda. In fact, I bought the Shapes 1 stamp set by Claritystamp especially to make a card using bleach to remove colour rather than adding one colour over another.  I wasn't sure when I started, where the card would be going after that - other than wanting to use autumnal colours - but I am delighted with the finished piece. 


The size of the topper was dictated by the length of the diamond stamp (5.5cm).  As I wanted to use it three times down the right hand side of the card, I cut a piece of Sheena's white stamping card to 16.5cm x 16.5cm and used a small blending tool to cover it all over with Rusty Hinge, Fossilized Amber, Festive Berries, Spiced Marmalade and a tiny amount of Gathered Twigs distress inks.
Once I was happy with the blend, I used the solid diamond shaped stamp from the Shapes 1 stamp set and painted bleach onto it.  Once stamped, it removed the colour; to intensify the effect, I over stamped the same place several times, drying the bleached areas with a heat gun.  
As I was using autumnal colours, I had a look through my foliage stamps and found the Autumn Foliage set by The Ton.  This is a set of leaf stamps which allows you to build up the image in layers from a solid base to fine detail, using three different stamps for each.  By starting with the lightest colour and building up to the darkest colour, you achieve a realistic looking leaf.  As the leaf which I wanted to stamp was slightly larger than the bleached area, I decided on a 'Coffee' final layer over Saffron and Monarch Orange archival ink.  This clearly defined each image as it went over onto the darker background, while tying in with the colour palette.
The next stamp that I worked with is from the Skeleton Leaves set by Inkylicious.  I chose the maple leaf to tie in with the first image and stamped and heat embossed it in the upper left corner, using Ancient Copper detail powder from Cosmic Shimmer.  I felt that heat embossing all the larger leaves would be too much, so alternated masking and stamping using Coffee archival ink and Versamark / Ancient Copper heat embossing. 
I colour blended another piece of white stamp card to match the background, and stamped and heat embossed the Look Fabulous cling stamp by Stampendous onto it.  Once trimmed down, the sentiment was matted onto dark brown card and then white card leaving a narrow border each time.  The large topper was matted onto the same colour brown card and added to a white 17cm x 17cm pre made card.  The sentiment topper was then added, using foam pads for added dimension.

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