CASTAWAY INK PAD

lightens paper in stamped areas

The Castaway Pad contains a clear, ink, just slightly thicker than water. It stamps clear and Des's change until it's heated with an iron. The ink will lighten the paper in the stamped areas when heated. I used this pad to create the gingko leaf background in my sample piece, to the right.

The package recommends waiting 5 minutes to let the ink soak into the paper and then ironing on the cotton setting. I found those to be good, accurate instructions in my tests. I tried putting paper towel between my paper and iron in hopes that maybe any iron could be used instead of one dedicated to crafting. I found it just didn't quite get hot enough with my iron, so I tried ironing directly and it worked great. It doesn't seem to leave any residue on the iron, so you may get away with using your regularly laundry iron if you clean it well afterward. Some inexpensive craft irons don't get hot enough for this technique to work.

I was dubious about how much I really needed to carry this pad since it appeared in samples I'd seen to work similar to stamping with bleach. It even claims to work better on some papers than others and not on some papers, so I was still thinking, that sounds a lot like bleach. However, it seems to work on papers that bleach doesn't bleach and it seems to work better on most papers that bleach does bleach. It also doesn't have the odor or seem to be as dangerous to your clothing and work area, so I do find this pad to be a useful addition to my collection.

As you can see, you need to actually test each kind of paper to understand what kind of results you'll get. I found that different colors of the same brand of paper accepted the ink differently. In once case, not shown, I found the light pink of Bazzill Criss Cross to provide striking results, while, surprisingly, the medium pink from the same multipack hardly changed color at all. The one consistent thing I found was that the thicker the ink goes on, the lighter the color will change to.