Group of Cardmakers - Bleaching (with Bleach or Water)

Hi everybody.  This month's Group of Cardmakers technique is Bleaching which can be done either with bleach or using water, and I have opted for water.  I used a set of stamps which came with Crafter's Companion Premium Magazine No. 11 which has some lovely flowers and sentiments, and I used one of the two larger sprays of flowers, and I also used a set of Clarity Crafts Nested Square Doodle Frame- Its dies which has cut into the card frames and a set of stitched square dies bought a long time ago from The Works.  Sorry the photo is not quite as bright as it might be but I used a daylight lamp and I realise now that I didn't turn the overhead light off and that is a more yellow light. 

After cutting a stitched square using the largest die in the set I ink blended it using three Distress Inks - Blueprint Sketch, Peacock Feathers and Mowed Lawn.  Unfortunately the Peacock Feathers in the centre doesn't show up very well as blending the colours took away some of the brightness and the green tends to have taken over rather so probably a lighter tone of green would have work better.  Making sure it was perfectly dry I stamped the flowers with Versamark and heat set using WOW Metallic Rich Gold Embossing Powder.  I then used a small water brush and started to take the colour out of the stamping.  It only lifts a certain amount of it but it shows up quite well as I did blend the ink quite heavily.  I finished by adding a sentiment embossed with the same gold embossing powder, and then used the Frame-Its die around the edge of the 6" square card base and added the flower topper in the middle of it.

This is a fun technique and looks quite effective.  You can keep going and perhaps lift more of the colour than I did, but as I didn't want to add any more of a different colour to the flowers I think it works well.  There are more wonderful examples of this technique on the blog from the other ladies, and if you do make any cards using this technique there is a Linky where you can add them and we would love you to do that.

Thanks for visiting my blog today and I'll be back soon.