The kimono is put back into pieces of panels, and the blue lines of the design is once again traced over with “itome-nori” (rice powder paste).  Itome-nori is made from “mochi-ko” (starch made of glutinous rice), rice bran, salt, and zinc.  This works as a resist to keep the white garment underneath from pigment.  A cone shaped tube with very small opening is used to squeeze out the paste, just like whipped cream is squeezed on a cake for decoration.  To seal the resist, another starch “fu-nori” extracted from seaweed is brushed all over on the reverse of the garment.

The next step is iro-sashi, hand-painting on the garment.  Five basic colors are used in Yuzen, namely, red, yellow, blue, green and purple.  They are mixed to make different colors, and with a bit of water for creating different tones of colors.  Unlike drawing a picture, paint is not supposed to be brushed on the same spot more than one time.  For painting, brushes with many different sizes and shapes are used, as well as painting technique such as gradation or shading.  Then, starch resist is applied to all the painted area to protect them when the background color is brushed on.  Then, very fine sawdust is sprinkled over the starch before it dries.  This sawdust absorbs the background color, and doubly makes sure to keep the design from being spoiled.