Bleedthrumanade Recipe Tutorial

Got Lemons, make lemonade; Got Bleed-thru, make bleedthrumanade

Recently, I've had several requests to explain how I do a Bleedthrumanade.  I think the process is simpler than people expect it to be, and I hope this makes it clearer--I'm simply taking advantage of the fact that color from alcohol markers shows up on the back of page, lol!  I use my bleedthrumanades as background for tangling (see my What is a Zentangle page, if you are unsure what that means), but you could draw or doodle whatever you wanted.

Bleedthrumanade Recipe 

Ingredients: Letraset Promarkers & (or any wet media-Copics, Sharpies,Watercolor, etc that bleeds thru to the back of the page)
Letraset Fineliners (or any non-bleedthru black pen)
Pentel Sunburst white Gel Pen (or any white gel pen, acrylic or ink)
3.5" x 7" (9 x 18 cm) Paperblanks Journal (or any paper that allows bleedthru to the back).

Preheat your self to FUN.





Here are the completed pages, so you can see them better.

Tips for more fun: Try to make the front and back of the bleedthrumanade as different as possible.  There are several techniques to help you do this.

If you are tangling or using patterns, try to use completely different patterns on each side.

Apply the colors at random, then use them as your string (sections).  But, on the front page, you might do one pattern in all the yellow, another in the pink, and another in the purples.  On the back of the page, you might decide that every pattern will span two colors.  In other words, one area would be yellow/pink, another would have yellow/purple, and so on.  You might also look for shapes that seem to appear, and use those as your string sections rather than the color.
Turn your page around so you are looking at the colors differently when you start the back.  If you've done the front as portrait, do the back as a landscape.  Or just turn it upside down.
In the example, I decided to focus on the circle/bubble shapes on both sides, but another option would have been to ignore those circles and tangled right over them.  This can give surprisingly pleasant effects.

Add bubbles with white highlighter on one side, but not the other.
I switched from a Fineline Pen to a Brush pen because it gives a different kind of line.  You could change to pens with larger or smaller tips.  Change pen color and do your tangles in Sepia or red instead of black.
Use stamps on one side of the page but not the other.  That will change the layout and the way you look at the page, so you'll get a totally different drawing.