Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Wednesday Trends - Masking

Hello! Happy Halloween!!! It's Kelly here with Wednesday Trends and today is all about masking. Masking is covering up all or part of an image and stamping over it, to create levels of dimension in your final image. I love using this technique to set a scene on a card or when creating a bouquet of flowers.
 
Let's get started! Since it's Halloween, I chose Hauntingly Delightful to work with today. It's a fun set to work with on its own, but add the masking technique and you'll be able to create even more adorable images.
 
The first step is to create the mask. I chose Dracula here from this set and stamped him once on a Post-It paper (blue here) and once on my white cardstock. Then I carefully cut out the blue dracula to form my mask. (Once I create a mask for a stamp set, I store it with the stamp set for future use.)

 
Next step is to take the mask and carefully place it over the image that was stamped on the white cardstock. Then stamp images that you would like to appear behind the main image. When masking, you work from the front to the back. Here I put some bats behind Dracula. Whatever part of the bat stamps onto the blue mask will not show up on the final image.
 


I did this several times, keeping the mask in place over the original stamped image. When I was happy with the design, I removed the mask and was left with this image:

 
Of course this is only the beginning! I went to work coloring the image and making him the star of a Halloween card, shown here:
 

 
When coloring this image, I also used the reverse masking technique, using a circle die. Here I wanted the white to remain on the outside to form a border, so I left the image in the die and sponged the white cardstock with a yellow ink. When I removed the die, the border was left white.
 
Here are some other projects I made using the masking technique:
For this card, I used one bloom to create a bouquet of flowers. I also used another mask to create a vertical edge on each side of the bouquet.
 
 
 

Here I used two reindeer from the HoHoHo to create Santa's team. I also put Rudolph next to Santa here. So cute!!

 
 
Hope you will try this technique soon! Have fun!!
 
 
 

4 comments:

  1. This is a great tutorial for masking! Thanks for providing such great examples!

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  2. I appreicate your directions on how you masked. Using the phrase 'working from front to back' makes total sense now. I will be trying this techniqe now.

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  3. Teehee. Love that little reindeer on your sweet layout. What a little cutie pie!

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  4. Adorable halloween card...thanks for the masking tutorial.

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