How to Make Bleeding Tissue Paper Art

I love creating colourful stuff and bleeding tissue paper can create some beautiful bright colour patterns. It’s really simple and is a process art project that even really young children can create beautiful results from although they will likely end up rather brightly coloured themselves by the end of it! Here’s how to make your own art with just white paper, tissue paper and water.

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What You’ll Need to Create Bleeding Tissue Paper Art

• White paper, card or canvas – better quality paper or card* will wrinkle less when it gets wet but anything will work really
• Tissue paper (check it’s the type that bleeds, we used this one*)
• Bowl of water
• Paintbrushes (optional) – chunky ones* work well

Deciding What You Want to Make

We wanted to make some large hearts to put in our windows so we started by cutting out heart shapes and then laying them on top of some scrap paper. If you want to create cards you can cut out any shape you want in the right size to stick to a card later. You could even use letters or numbers for a birthday age.

We also wanted to create some wall art too so used some small A5 canvasses for that which we got from The Works.

How to Make Bleeding Tissue Paper Art

Tear your tissue paper into pieces, its nice to have a variety of different sizes but it will depend what size paper you’re working on.

Place pieces of the tissue paper onto your paper/card/canvas and then brush it with water. If you’re not using paintbrushes, just dip the tissue paper in the water and then place it on.

You can achieve good effects with combining a couple of colours that either clash or compliment each other but we mostly went for a rainbow effect this time.

You’ll want to get it quite wet to make sure the colour bleeds well, in particular if you are using canvases. If you donn’t get it wet enough you’ll be left with white patches.

Leave the tissue paper on until its completely dry, then remove it. You should be left with beautiful patterns of colour.

Be aware that wet tissue paper stains everything so don’t do it in your Sunday best on your brand new dining table.

Want to Try Some Other Process Art with your Kids?

If you’d like to try some other process art, check out our marbled card with shaving foam and food colouring or our coasters decorated with sharpies and rubbing alcohol. If you want more uses for bleeding tissue paper, have a look at these beautiful tissue paper dyed Easter eggs.

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