Saturday Stampin' with the Polished Stone and Bleach Techniques

QKD Bloggers, this Saturday still finds many of us in the USA covered in ice and snow.  I'm almost done with my Valentines and already thinking of spring and projects in pastel colors adorned with pretty butterflies and birds. But it seems appropriate for today to take one last look at these icy snowpeople. This card was on my blog back in mid-December.  Today I'm showing it on the QKD blog as a featured technique.

This background technique is called polished stone. I put drops of dye reinker onto a cotton ball and dabbed the cotton ball onto glossy cardstock (not to be confused with glossy photo paper). The inks I used are two shades of blue and also metallic silver.  Then I stamped the snow people from the QKD Northern Exposure stamp set with VersaMark and heat embossed with black embossing powder. Next I took a cotton swab dipped in bleach and removed the background ink from the images. I discovered that metallic ink doesn't want to cooperate with bleach removal. But the overall effect looks like more realistic icy snowballs.

I encourage you to try this technique. Just keep in mind a couple of things: 1) give yourself plenty of time to finish your project as it took more than one day for the ink to dry; 2) if you use metallic ink, it rubs off when you polish the background with a cloth yet is harder to remove with alcohol than regular dye ink. I always suggest making several backgrounds in one sitting.  You'll have them ready to go when you need them.

Until next Saturday, I hope you have time to stamp a lot!  Helene aka 2amscrapper at  LOTSA SCRAP