Acrylic block and Bleaching

I got a lot of reactions like "how did you do that" on this card and the first card in this post. So I decided to do a photo tutorial. And to give credit where credit is due! This is NOT a technique I came up with. I saw it described in an article by Hermine Koster and I loved it! I don't know if she thought of it but she is the one who taught me this. So let's get started, shall we?

 

 1. pick the distress colors you want with the stamp. Find an acrylic block slightly smaller than the stamp.

 

 2. start coloring the acrylic block with the lightest color. I did it with distress markers but you can use any water based ink you want.

 

 3. add touches of darker colors randomly on the block.

 

 4. mist water over it to make the ink blend.

 

 5. press where you want it on your paper. Give the ink time to seep into the paper.

 

 6. you end up with something like this.

 

 7. mask edges and blend in one of the lighter colors on the white spots.

 

 8. this is the result I got after blending.

 

 9. and now the magic trick: apply versamark ink to the edges of the acrilyc block only. It doesn't have to be neat. Little smears and spots only make it more interesting.

 

10. press block on your colored rectangle.

 

 11. and there you have it. A lovely rectangle with blended distress colors.

 

 12. stamp your image onto the colored block. make sure some part of the image is outside the rectangle. in this example it's just a tiny part of the tree and the snow outside the box. if you have a flower it is probably lovely to stamp it half in, half out of the rectangle.

 

 13. take a bit of ink on your pencil and color in the appropriate "outside the rectangle" parts.

 

 14. I just had to color the tree tops and a little bit below the rectangle.

 

 15. another fun part! get some chlorine and start applying it where you want on your image. sometimes you just have to wait for the bleaching to start. so don't apply loads of it! do some little stripes first until you see how your color is going to react.

 

 16. this is what you should end up with.

 17. trim image to fit the card. cut another card slightly bigger than your image. I made it 1/4 inch larger. 1/4 inch gives a nice border, not too big, not too small.

Do you see my Tonic Guillotine in action? I love that trimmer!

 18. color edges of the bordercard with appropriate color distress stains

 19. glue your image on the bordercard. to avoid smudging the image I usually take a piece of scrap paper to cover it. experience taught me my fingers are not clean after this technique!

 

 20. stamp sentiment where you want it. Slightly over the colored rectangle is usually a nice idea. Embellish as you want.

 

21. And here is finished card. this is a fantastic technique and I am glad to finally have made this tutorial. I hope you will give it a try too!