A bit of bleaching

Good evening!  It has been a busy bank holiday for me.  I packed my bag and set off for Leyland near Preston (266 miles away from me) on Friday morning to go to a weekend workshop with Susan Moran and Maria Simms.  It was heck of a journey and the M6 on a Friday before a bank holiday is not the best place to be!!, but I got there just in time for the evening meal.  The traumas of the journey were soon forgotten as I had a delicious meal and sat chatting with some lovely crafty ladies.  It was a brilliant weekend with lovely projects, good food and fine company.

Then today, it was out for a family meal to celebrate the 21st birthday of my niece.  Another lovely meal (the diet starts tomorrow!!) and more good company. 

Tomorrow it's back to reality and work......
The two cards today are both done on kraft card using bleach, so I thought I  would show them together.  I did them for Paul's recent show

Paul chose this card to demo on the TV and he pretty much nailed the first part - I masked off a square in the centre of the card, then ran masking tape round the edge to leave a border and stamped one of the petals round the frame and brushed some ink through.  Paul even used the same inkpad - Archival Plum!
I removed the masks then put the stencil in place and brushed a light colouring of ink through, just to act as a guide to stamp all the petals in place.  This is where we differed, Paul used a white pen to add highlights.  I used bleach!  Yes, good old fashioned bleach.  I used a fine paint brush and just dipped the end in some bleach and painter the bits I  wanted to lighten.  It can be a bit hit and miss as not all card bleaches and even if it does, it doesn't all bleach the same, but it is always fun to see the results and I have to say, I was very pleased with the way this card reacted...

so much so that I did the balloon in the same way, but I stamped and embossed this one before bleaching.
I used black ink with the cloud mask to do the sky and a lot of black ink to colour the monument valley stencil.
I added a bit of gold frontage embossing powder and heated from underneath, so it doesn't blow around all over the place!
I also added a few gold sequins.

I hope you've had a lovely weekend too
Janet xxx