Say what? Yep. Citrasolv. It’s more than a housecleaning product. See my case in point below. I saw on a Pinterest board that Citrasolv helped lift the printing chemicals off the pages of National Geographic magazines and left some incredible art work behind. The process was simple. Basically it involved soaking the pages for at least 15 minutes or up to 2 hours in Citrasolv and then placing one page at a time onto a gel press, laying a stencil on top of the page and rubbing it slightly with a wet wipe. Sometimes it took a little bit more rubbing, sometimes, not. I know that you can find the instructions on the StencilGirl Talk Blog provided by artist and designer, Carol Wiebe, here.) The results were absolutely amazing. I had been dying to try this for years and in June, when I met up with MaryBeth Shaw of Stencil Girl Products and Kristin Williams of Ephemera Paducah and mentioned my interest, they said they would show me how to do it. I was giddy by then but NOTHING compared to how I felt as the stencil designs rubbed off onto my pages. I did page after page and only stopped to get some air. (Citrasolv is pretty potent so if you attempt this, please have plenty of ventilation!) Fairly certain if I didn’t have to go to bed I would have been there all night. Ah, sleep is overrated when it comes to art.
Here are three of my favorites. I was told originally that you need to used National Geographic Magazines that are from 1969 or older. Apparently the type of inks used for printing and the type of paper react positively with the Citrasolv. However, I have learned from others that the newer ones work too but sometimes it means allowing them to soak longer.
Closer up you can see some details. What I love is that I can still see, ever so slightly, the residuals of the actual photograph. If you look closely, one of them has several jelly fish floating in a body of ocean water. Pretty cool! You can locate them better from the photo below.
And finally a meshing of a few other pieces. Interesting how I changed the background and the look of the pieces changed to bring up different colors.
If you are interest in any of the StencilGirl stencils shown above, please go here. They have the most amazing stencils by some mighty amazing designers.
So that’s it! Tell me you are tempted to try it? Sooo much fun and it’s pretty inexpensive. Make sure to post your project if you make one. Would love to see it!
XO,
Debi
P.S. I bought my Citrasolv at Ephemera Paducah in Kentucky and you can order it from there. It is also available at some of your nicer art supply stores.
This looks aMAzing!!!!! Do the pages have to be laid on a gel press? What happens if you lay them on a craft mat instead? Inquiring minds (who don’t have a gel press)….. Beautiful results, and yes, I want to try it ?
Thank you Diana. Sent you a note. You can use it without the gel press but I think the results from the padding of the press is much greater than a flat, hard surface.
I bought some Citrasolv a while back but never got around to more than testing with some different magazines. This makes me want to get it back out and play some more. I don’t have a gel press either so I’ll have to try to improvise. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you DJ. Can’t wait to see what you create.
So fabulous, Debi!! Your results are really amazing!
Gorgeous! That was so much fun.
Oh these are incredible. I really love how they came out.
If I am understanding this process correctly, you used the Gel Press only as a soft subsurface, not to transfer any paint or ink or to do any part of the printing. Is that right?
Yes. That’s it. 🙂
Thank you for replying. Your prints were exceptionally beautiful.
I bought my citrasolv in the local grocery store. It is everywhere.