I was a bit wary of using a "good" or should I say "favourite" stamp so I chose this birdcage one. It is red rubber, I guess polymer would not do for this technique, so it was a question of getting a stamp pad made with bleach instead of ink. I first of all folded some kitchen roll up to make a kind of pad - put it on a plate and poured some bleach on it. Then I carefully picked it up and turned it over so that the whole thing became saturated but not too wet. (I only had thick bleach, suppose the thin stuff would work as well and would pour better onto the wad of paper.)
I then used a nylon paintbrush which is what I use when bleaching areas out and tried it on the corner of a couple of pieces of cardstock. Mmm..... bleaches ok so let's go for it.
The first one turned out like this:
ok but not that brilliant
the second one was similar
Both in the bin!
Both in the bin!
Didn't want to use black but ...
Yes!
Now to wash my stamp quickly
Then a piece of cardstock I had left over from some Distressing caught my eye - would that work? A dab with the paintbrush and yes, it worked.
Another stamp. It had been fine with the other, perhaps one of my butterfly stamps as I have lots. By this time I was in the mood for experimenting and I overstamped the bleached images with Adirondack Bottle.
A bit more experimentation, whilst the Bottle ink was on the stamp I tapped it in the bleach and it gave me the second butterfly top left - not sure about this - might need a bit more playing around with. BTW it is pretty INSTANT on the Distress Inked background.
Did another, just using bleach and turned two of my pieces into cards - hope you like and you give this a try - very cost effective. DO WASH YOUR STAMP ASAP WHEN YOU HAVE USED IT. I am not going to be afraid of using any of my stamps to do this technique now. Thanks JFF for encouraging me to do it.
Have you something you haven't done before? Join us at Just for Fun this week. Look forward to seeing you there.
