Blog Hop-Bleaching Your Cards-Year of Techniques

Welcome to A Year of Card Techniques Blog Hop where each month we feature a different card technique.  We’ve assembled a team of card makers who range from new to advanced, so you’ll see a great variety of cards and ideas.

From laundry, to disinfectant, to fashion, bleach is a staple in many households; but did you know you can use bleach in your card making and paper crafting? Yup, from stamping, to painting, and several techniques in between, we’re going to share our experiments with you. And if you would like to check out our past technique hops, you can do that here:

• January-Shaving Cream Marbleizing
• February-So Sketchy
• March-no hop this month
• April-Stamp Set Showdown
• May-World of Watercolor
• June-Basic Card Folds

Our  amazing sponsor this month is Debbie Bonczek of Close to My Heart.

Please take a moment to check out the great products Close to My Heart has to offer. To visit Debbie's blog, click here.

And the awesome prizes this month are:

We really appreciate feedback, so please leave a comment on each of the blogs in the hop today. While you are encouraged to comment at any time, only comments received by Friday, July 21, 2017 at 8:00pm (EST) will be eligible to win. The winner will be announced on Sunday, July 23, 2017 on A Piece of (my) Heart’s blog, so be sure to check her blog on Sunday the 23rd to see if you are the lucky winner.

You should  have arrived here from Wima. If you're visiting  here first, you might want to start at the beginning so you don't miss out on increasing your chance of winning by commenting on  each blog.

We start with design team member, Gracie.

Bleach is so much fun...  I ruin clothes, I spill it on my craft table.  But it makes a cool effect on cards!  I used 2 colors of cardstock - dark blue and brown with totally different results.  I stamped hot air balloons using a Hampton Arts stamp set with Memento Luxe Tuxedo Black ink and embossed with Whispers clear embossing powder.  I painted each of the balloons with bleach and let them dry.  They blue dried to be beige color and the brown to a yellow.  The baskets on the balloons show the original color.  I mounted them on some Grahpics 45 paper from the "Come Fly Away With Me" collection I touched up with blue and brown distress inks.  The sentiment is stamped with gold embossing powder and is from the same stamp set.  I added 3 bronze buttons and mounted the panel on a brown panel and placed it on a white cardstock card base.  I used foam dots to pop up the blue balloon for dimension.  Now go play with bleach! ~ Gracie 

Next we have Sue.

Closeup view

So, I was stuck because I didn’t have any bleach. I was trying to figure out if I could substitute bleach with something else. However, it’s pretty difficult to use a bleach technique, without bleach. So, I asked my neighbor and she gave me about a quarter of a cup of bleach. Yippee for neighbours!

I started by doing direct to paper with Distress Ink – Peacock Feathers and I added Distress Ink – Blueprint Sketch with an ink blending tool, along the edges of the panel. I heated the panel with my heat tool to help the drying process.  I then used an embossing buddy to ensure the panel was dry and that embossing powder wouldn’t adhere where it wasn’t supposed to. I used the small flower from Simon Says STAMP Look for the Miracles and stamped with the Blueprint Sketch distress ink and then covered with clear embossing powder. I tried to work quickly  (I didn’t want the distress ink to dry because the embossing powder wouldn’t adhere). Using a small paint brush, I dipped into the bleach and “painted” the petals of the flowers and let the bleach sit. I didn’t notice much of a change in colour right away. However, as the bleach dried, the colour was “bleached” out. I liked the look. I cut the panel on a bit of a diagonal. To finish the card, I added a thin silver strip and heat embossed with silver the sentiment from Simon Says STAMP Summer Garden on a strip of black cardstock.  - Sue

Now comes Tantalaya.

I used the hello lovely stamp set from Concord & 9th. After I heat embossed the image in black detail embossing powder then I took some of the house hold bleach and created this simple and yet beautiful card. Behind the sentiment is a piece of vellum that gives added interest. -Tantalaya 

Finally we have a set from Denise.

A closeup of the green card.

I took some of my card making supplies on vacation with me to make the panels for this technique.  Because I didn’t want to mess with liquid bleach, I used a bleach pen to add the bleach to the paper and then used a brush to pull it into all the area I wanted to bleach.  I had a limited supply of paper and cardstock with me, and found some cardstock worked better than others. In fact a couple really didn’t react at all or were really streaky, so I threw those away.  When I do this again, I will test the paper to see how it reacts before wasting the embossing. I used the same image of a very cool elephant head for all the cards from Unity Stamp Company called Huge Possibilities.  I used Versfine black ink and clear embossing powder. I used the bleach just within the image and it was interesting to see how it reacted on the different cardstock.  I had to go over the black three times to get it light enough to contrast. I made a set of cards using sentiments from CTMH, Just to Say and Altenew, Painted Greetings.  - Denise

Now you’re off to visit with Sandy. Hope you had fun and thanks for stopping by. See you next month with another technique!

The Card A Day Challenge Design Team.

Here’s the full line-up in case you get lost:  

• Sharon
• Claudia
• Kim
• Wilma
• Card A Day Challenge Team
• Sandy
• Jodie
• Debbie
• Ronda