Appreciate Beauty in Everything

Today I have a CAS (clean and simple) card for you.  I used the bleach technique again (for another example, see my post here) to make this card with this beautiful butterfly rubber stamp from Unity Stamps.   After heat embossing and bleaching out the black paper, I colored the image with Marvy markers and added Enamel Accents in the four corners.

For the inside of the card, I followed the same design but added the Dainty Doily from Lifestyle Crafts, which I spritzed with Smooch Spritz (silver foil) and my sentiment "appreciate the beauty in everything".  This sentiment, which is another rubber stamp from Unity Stamps, was created by cutting out sticky paper with Spellbinders (Curved Rectangles #1 and #2) and covering with PK Glitz glitter (silver, burgundy).  At first I wasn't sure how to get the message onto to glittered burgundy background, but decided to stamp the image in a glue pad, stamp directly onto the glitter and then glitter again.  Guess what? It worked!  This looks extremely shimmery in person.  The camera didn't do it justice, no matter how many times I tried to photograph it.  :-)

I'm also entering this in the following challenges: Crazy 4 Challenges (use black cardstock); Through the Craftroom Door (favorite technique)

Does this color make me look fat?

I had a little time to do a fun card (non design team) and I decided to try the bleach technique, which is also the challenge at Blockhead Stamps this month.  This is the first time I've tried this technique and I learned a few things, including that all black cardstock isn't created equally.  The first piece of black cardstock I tried was cheap and didn't bleach evenly.  As a result, the color was blotchy too.   I also discovered that embossing ink works much better than watermark ink (Versamark) because it holds more of the embossing powder and you get a sharper outline.   Lastly, you need to be patient.   After coloring the image, it didn't pop - at all!  It looked quite dull in fact.  I didn't have water based markers, so I tried pigment and dye ink markers (all waterproof), Smooch pearlized inks, and Distress Inks with a water brush.  All of them looked dull.

Since I wasn't getting anywhere, I walked away for a few hours.  When I came back to my craft room, the colors were much brighter.  And I was much happier.  Not only did I do the ladybugs, a rubber stamp from Unity Stamps, I also stamped and bleached one of the Unity butterflies (I'll didn't have time to create a card with this one, but I will soon because it's gorgeous!).  Out of all the different inks I tried, I liked the Marvy dye based markers and the Smooch pearlized inks the best, as these were the brightest.  I used both on this card.  I also used Smooch Spritz on my sentiment tab.

This was an interesting technique to try and I would like to do it again with water-based markers to see if there is a difference.  Have you tried this technique before?