Technique Tuesday: Masking

Masking and Reverse Masking are easy techniques which can be used in a variety of ways when stamping. For those of you who missed the class, there are tutorials on Splitcoast which Beate Johns has done--those instructions were used on the technique cards which were handed out at class.

Since Halloween will be here before we know it, we made a couple of treat bags full of candy! The small paper sacks can be found at Hobby Lobby and are the same ones used when making a tag album (like the one JoLynn made for me--52 Weeks of Madeline). We used the set Carved and Candlelit and a Savvy stamp that says, "Happy Halloween". A special thanks to Mama Kate who loaned us her stamps for this project. You can see that the larger pumpkin in the middle was the one that we masked so that the other two appear to be behind that main image. When masking, you always want to stamp your forefront image first, then mask it while stamping around it. Post-it notes work very well for making a mask of your image.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that this is one of my favorite cards ever! I love both of the sets used here, Happy Everything and Simply Circles (retired). The color combination is one that I would have never put together myself, but I CASE'd the card from one I saw on Splitcoast. Close to Cocoa, Tempting Turqoise and Green Galore were used on this card. The sentiment is stamped on a piece of Whisper White that measures 1.75" X 3.75".

I seemed to use a lot of retired sets this week and In Full Bloom was one of those sets. There was a lot of stamping, masking and coloring going on here so it was no surprise that there were a lot of modified versions of this card floating around Tuesday night! The flowers were stamped and colored on Whisper White and then a vellum piece was stamped with the sentiment from Wonderful Words. The two pieces were attached with brads and then mounted onto the Bravo Burgandy card base. I like the way the vellum softens the background and I need to remember that little trick more often!


Faux Framing is a variation of the Reverse Masking technique. What we did here was take a scrap that had already been punched with the Giga Scallop Circle Punch by Marvy Uchida. We then used a sponge to color in the negative space left by the punch. We got a nice scallop circle background for our stamped image. The images are from one of last year's Sell-a-Bration sets, Happy Harmony. Almost Amethyst, So Saffron and Old Olive were the colors we used on this card.

For this card we did some Reverse Masking. Instead of covering up an image and stamping around it, we made a mask of the pregnant woman and cut out her dress so that we could stamp the flowers on the dress. Stamp sets used on this card were Swell News and Paisley Background. Purely Pomegranate and Basic Grey