Mystery Technique #2 Revealed!!

Oh this was so much fun, I had lots of people post or e-mail their guesses and I have finally stumped you. It was a bit sneaky in a way but the top 2 guesses were Bleach Stamping or Soot Stamping (or some form there of) BUT neither was correct!

This is what I like to call....

Thermal Fax Paper Magic!

YES, it's all achieved by heating the paper!

I was cleaning and putting stuff in our supply file cabinet drawer when I noticed I still had a partial roll of thermal fax paper from our old fax machine ~ B*I*N*G*O!!!! I instantly had to sit down and start playing. I thought to myself ~ ya know, if you can add heat to print words then you can add heat (via a heat tool) and it *should* work for craftiness...

I was right ~ it does work!!!!

Everything is done with a few simple ingredients...some sort of ink (clear embossing or light colors work best), stamps, heat gun and of course the thermal paper!

If you don't have an old roll laying around it is very cheap ~ you can find it at any office store for just a couple dollars a roll. I'm not sure but there is usually 100+ feet on each roll so enough to last you a LONG time :) If you frequent Goodwill or other second hand/discount stores you can usually find a roll or two there as well. I always passed it by...till now ;) LOL!!

To just get some cool color, simply place the thermal fax paper on your work surface and add very little heat.

Trust me on this ~ it doesn't take much heat to activate it. Just a bit will do the trick for a cool looking background paper....Remember to keep the heat gun 6"+ from the paper and never stop moving.

The technique that most everyone commented on was the crackle image. For this you crumble the paper...

Smooth it out and add your ink to the high spots...

and heat...

by varying the color and amount of time you heat the paper you'll get a variety of great looking results!

The next technique is stamping with clear embossing ink ~ simply stamp

and heat....

for awesome snow white results...

If you prefer, you can add a bit of embossing powder...

for a sooty, shimmery image!

You could also stamp with plain old dye inks....

for another take on it...

NOW, the coolest thing is if you heat the paper by accident (ahem, don't ask how I know - lol) before you have a chance to stamp on it,

it still works ~ now your finished image won't be as white as the image you stamp before heating but it is a nice tranquil dove grey image after you heat it a second time.

This also works with dye inks! Again, a darker image than a stamp first image but still pretty cool.

So, there you have Mystery Technique #2...

Tomorrow I'll be back with a few examples putting Thermal Fax Paper Magic to use as well as some paper to give away so you can try it too!